who knew him well, will remember him also for the gentleness, the modesty, the simplicity, that underlay his wealth of learning, his idealism of character, and his stately forms of expression. A REVIVAL OF KINDLINESS. could I hate him?" he said of some one. "Don't I know him? I never could hate any one I knew." It was this ready comprehension of every man's nature, which made him say in his whimsical way, "I love a fool as naturally as if I were kith and kin to him." Nor was it a fondness which made him blind to his friend's foibles. Of queer MarTHERE has been no little attention given tin Burney he wrote, "Why does not his in recent literature to that apostle of kindli- guardian angel look after him? May be he ness, Charles Lamb. Numerous unpublished has tired him out." Of Wordsworth, who letters have appeared and one charming had declared he could have written Hamlet book, Mr. Martin's "In the Footsteps of if he'd had the mind, he said, "It is clear Charles Lamb." It is not possible for the nothing is wanting but the mind." Of his public to give much thought to the life landlord he wrote, He has £45 a year and and essays of this man without being one anecdote." Of everybody he made keen touched by his personality and stirred to characterizations, but always with kindefforts to bring about what is so greatly liness. needed in society—a revival of kindliness— for kindliness was the keystone of his personality. It ordered his life. It regulated his relation to men. He wrote nothing which was not permeated by this influence. It was the fundamental, dominating force of his being. The story of his care of his sister Mary in her frequent lapses into insanity is one of the most touching in the world. He made himself personally responsible for her behavior in order to save her from an asylum and to give her freedom and pleasure in her sane hours. He tied himself to a desk in the East India House for thirty years in order to support her, in spite of the fact that figures were an abomination to him, and that he looked with longing on the "beautiful innocency of the face of the man who never learned the multiplication table." He endured with the greatest courage the fact that he and Mary, because of her malady, were soon "marked," as he expressed it, in every neighborhood into which they went and obliged to move often, though so strong were his attachments to places, that as he said when they left Colebrook, "You may find some of our flesh sticking to the doorpost." This devotion was the natural expression of his heart. The only thing he could have done. Nor was he sympathetic only to his own. He possessed that highest of heart qualities-universal human tenderness. He always saw the best in men and awakened it sometimes from a long sleep. "How In spite of the fact that he was most frugal, living within his means, though he possessed a fine taste for books and for conviviality, nobody was more generous. His ward, Emma Isola (Mrs. Moxon), who died the other day, was but one of many of those whom he befriended with a generosity fitting a prince. Now this kind of open-heartedness, of universal charity, of human tenderness, of selfsacrificing devotion, does more to make life worth living than any other thing which a human being can put into it. It prevents injustice, bitterness, cruelty. It gives flexibility of character. It tempers right which, through rigidity, frequently becomes wrong. It broadens the heart to the world's width. It opens the eyes to the oneness of humanity. It reveals to the mind the God in all things. Society is, no doubt, becoming kinder as a whole. The merciful organizations which we have established are evidences of it. But society, however perfectly organized to care for the destitute, the aged, the afflicted, cannot do the work of the individual. We need a revival of personal kindliness; a quality like Charles Lamb's which will set us at hand to hand and heart to heart effort in our own homes and among our own friends. Gentleness for the weak, love for the sinning, though we may be the sufferers, personal self sacrifice for the afflicted, though there may be institutions to take care of them, kindliness as the habit of our minds and hearts, can undo most of the wrongs we or others have wrought. GENERAL W. T. SHERMAN. GENERAL SHERMAN has passed away, full of years and honors, but it was his misfortune, whether he knew it or not, that his military achievements hid from the public view a great body of virtues and acquirements which would have made their possessor famous in any walk in life. In this respect he stood head and shoulders above any and all other heroes of the Civil War. No other general, living or dead, equaled him in range of thought, study, and comprehension. Comparisons, by name, would seem invidious as well as odious; many generals did nobly— did more than was expected of them, but as a rule their energies and influence were confined to the military profession. But Sherman seemed to have thought of every thing, studied every thing that interests humanity. It will astonish some of his old soldierfollowers to know that "Uncle Billy" was as apt at theology as strategy; although not a member of any denomination he was at heart and in practice a sincere Christian. Up to a certain point he seemed liberal-as he wasbut on the fundamental truths of Christianity he was as sound and uncompromising as John Wesley or John Knox. For family reasons he avoided taking part in any battles of the creeds, but prominent champions of different faiths have found him able both as antagonist and instructor, and learned to hold him in high respect. He often gave business "points" to business men, and they were so good that the receivers asked for more. In politics he was by nature a statesman; parties were to him means to an end, and he never could understand how any patriot in full possession of his senses could train with either party through thick and thin while for the time being the other party was making an issue of a principle which the aforesaid patriot had at heart. He was the heartiest of advocates of the best educational facilities those which substitute the effort of the teacher with individual pupils, in distinction from the class-room routine which is the rule in most schools and colleges. Several years of his own life were devoted to teaching; he was a school-teacher in Louisiana when the Nation called him to buckle on his sword and take part in the Civil War. More than any other of our generals, Sherman was a genius. The word "genius" is much abused; perhaps at its best it is not good enough to describe Sherman at his best, no matter what might be the subject in mind. His conclusions came so quickly as to seem intuitive, but they were correct with a frequency denied to so-called intuitions in general. He seemed literally to jump at conclusions, but those who knew him best, knew that he had thought over the matter long before-thought over it so honestly and fearlessly, without partiality or prejudice, and with so much mental effort, that the result was generally a just decision. Portraits recently published show a brow full of wrinkles, as becomes a man past seventy. But Sherman's friends saw all those wrinkles thirty years ago, before the war began; they were the results of hard and persistent concentration of mental effort, which began while he was a young man, and never ended. Odd though it may seem, the lightest-hearted period of Sherman's career was while he was handling a great army; at that time other subjects of general interest were laid aside, but his natural habit was to carry in his mind all the problems of the world's progress and need, and endeavor to solve them; as a consequence, no man was more sought after by statesmen, journalists, and others whose business it is to cope with great questions; all such men found that a halfhour chat with Sherman would "clear the air" amazingly. Sherman was "the bright, consummate flower" of West Point; it is the purpose of that school to graduate for our little and republican army a body of officers, any of whom shall be able to fill at short notice any position,-military, diplomatic, practical, or intellectual to which by any possibility a soldier of high rank may be called. The standard is too high, perhaps, but so are the possible requirements of our army officers; failure to reach it is sometimes more honorable than success at foreign military schools. man, however, was through life a brilliant example of what could be accomplished by a good mind and unflagging purpose. Sher It remains to be said that this great mind was never sullied by any vice peculiar to camp and field. He was honest, pure, genial, generous, affectionate, and sincere to a degree that at times seemed aggressive. His military record is closed, but his greater life remains to be written, for there were few so noble or so little known. EDITOR'S NOTE-BOOK. THE Fifty-First Congress came to an end March 4. The last session has been singularly inoperative, though in two or three cases what has not been done has been of vast benefit to the country, conspicuously the shelving of the Free Coinage bill. The much needed relief asked for the Supreme Court, after many years of waiting, has been granted. The International Copyright bill happily at last is passed; and though it may not be entirely satisfactory it nevertheless is a triumph on the side of honesty and gives an author a certain right to the products of his brain. To the indomitable perseverance of its supporters in the Senate and House is due warm praise. The inefficiency of the closing session is due in no small part to the fact that so many of the members were back for services after defeat at the polls. It is a peculiar and unwise arrangement to ask work of anybody after he has been discharged, but this is what we do of a congressman after dismissing him at the polls. PRESIDENT HARRISON has appointed exGovernor Charles Foster to take Mr. Windom's place as Secretary of the Treasury. The appointment has been well received. Mr. Foster is a conservative financier of experience and good sense. He will, it is supposed, follow Secretary Windom in opposition to free coinage. The President in a message to Congress, complained of the law requiring him to fill vacancies in his Cabinet within ten days after they occur. It is a needless restriction on the constitutional rights of the Executive. The law is a relic of the old controversy between Congress and the Executive when Andrew Johnson was President. It was designed to keep him from surrounding himself with Cabinet advisers who would not be confirmed by the Senate. It should long ago have been repealed. In performing so important a duty as filling a Cabinet vacancy, time is essential. CHAUTAUQUANS will be interested in the appointment of Senator Blair as Minister to China, for he always has been a firm friend of the Chautauqua movement as he is of all efforts at progress and reform. The position entails many irritating circumstances. The etiquette of the Court is peculiar and exacting. The language is difficult. The mission is second class and does not give the representative of the United States the position he naturally expects to have assigned to one coming from this country. The salary, too, $12,500, is no more than is necessary for life there under the present conditions. It was in November, 1889, that Brazil was declared a republic. The vicissitudes of the last year and a quarter have been many and sometimes threatening, but the new republic has proved its worth. The constitution promulgated last June was adopted in February by the Assembly elected last September, and General da Fonseca, the first president of the Provisional Government, was elected president of the United States of Brazil. This peaceful revolution is one of the greatest triumphs of government in the history of the world. Our readers who wish to secure a clear and popular presentation of the Brazilian constitution should see Mr. Ford's article in THE CHAUTAUQUAN for December, 1890. THE revolution in Chili has assumed much greater proportions than outbreaks in these explosive South American countries usually do. The contest is between the president and the army on one side and the congress and the navy on the other. President Balmaceda has acted the part of a tyrant during his five years of office-holding, dissolving cabinets at will and forcing measures, regardless of the constitution. Congress at last revolted, enlisting the navy in its favor. Public opinion seems to be with the insurgents. Chili has been recognized as the leading country of South America in many respects and it is most unfortunate that so serious a disturbance should interrupt her peace and prosperity. THE translation which we publish this month on the "Writings and Orations of Signor Crispi," is of particular interest because of recent events in Italian politics. Signor Crispi resigned his premiership early in the year, forced to the action by his own was unveiled in London on the centennial day, and various lesser honors have been bestowed in this country. His greatest memorial is the records of Methodism. impolitic utterances in the Chamber. His trammeled spirit. A fine statue of Wesley policy has been bold and successful. He has raised Italy to a first-class European power and has kept her in the Triple Alliance, but this has cost the country vast sums raised by enormous taxation. At the last election Signor Crispi promised that the burden should not be increased. At the opening of the Chamber he violated his promise, asking for more money. The remarks with which he enforced his demand incensed many members. His bill was rejected and he resigned. His successor, the Marquis di Rudini, has a serious task to do what he proposes, to enforce economy and preserve the Triple Alliance. THE last week of February was known in Washington as Woman's Week, two great convocations of women, the Triennial Council and the National Suffrage Convention, holding sessions. It was evident that the gatherings were fashionable. Magnificent audiences greeted the speakers and every courtesy was showered upon members and visitors. Miss Frances E. Willard has been president of the Triennial Council and she arranged a brilliant program for the meeting. Upon it was represented all the leading interests which are contributing to-day to the cause of the general advancement of women; and she secured as representatives the ablest women of the country. The suffrage convention was of course devoted to a more special line of work. The convention has set for itself a number of special ends, among them are securing the appointment of women on the Sunday-school lesson committee and on the board of the National Reform Divorce League, urging equal pay for equal work for men and women in Government employ, securing an invitation from the Columbian exposition for the International Council of Women which meets in 1893, and designing a business costume for women which shall meet the demands of health, comfort, and good taste. THE general celebration in March of the one hundredth anniversary of the death of John Wesley ought to be a stimulus and a blessing to Methodism. His life is one of such splendid force and resolution and its consequences have been so marvelous both to the organization he founded and to society at large that a new purpose must come to his followers from considering his enthusiasm, his determination, his vigorous, un CARDINAL LAVIGERIE, the eminent Catholic, has divulged a beneficent scheme almost as extensive as General Booth's plan for lighting Darkest England. The Cardinal's plan is for rescuing the Sahara Desert and repressing the slave trade. He proposes what he calls the Sahara Brotherhood. The members are to begin operations by opening wells and planting trees in the great waste, carrying on at the same time an active warfare against the slave trade. The Pope has sanctioned the plan and some two thousand persons have already offered themselves for membership. AT the sale of the Ives collection of books, manuscripts, and various works of art, at the beginning of last month, the rarest object offered was a copy of the Gutenberg Bible published at Mentz in 1455. It was pur chased by J. W. Elsworth, of Chicago, for $14,800. It is one of the twenty-eight copies which are all that are known to be extant. In the catalogue of the collection prepared by Mr. Ives, he says regarding this book, and his coming into possession of it: in England gave unexpected and most favorable The dispersion of several of the finest libraries It is not in the range of probability that collectopportunities to secure books of this description. ors will ever again have such facilities in this direction as were given by the sale of the Sunderland, Hamilton Palace, Beckford, Syston Park, and Wodhull Libraries. . . . I was fortunate enough to secure many of the more notable of these precious volumes; and to crown fittingly my acquisition of them by the purchase of the most remarkable of all printed books, as it is the first-the Gutenberg Bible. THE tree-planting month of the United States is April. The advantage of the custom is not alone an increase in shade and beauty in the country, the awakening of the tree-loving spirit among the young is a greater gain. There is no taste more pure or more absorbing than that for trees. Who that has read Sydney Smith's life can forget his fruit trees, known to this day as "Sydney's Orchards." It is this taste that has made Joaquin Miller abandon his writing and go to tree-planting in a Western home. It is this which has filled our literature with songs of favorite trees and endowed many a fine trunk with a personality almost human. It is this that impels Dr. Fields to write of his favorite trees: We have come into a perfect understanding and silent communion. Those trees know me; they know when I am in a silent mood, and they keep very still, hardly a leaf stirring; and when they begin to move, it is very gently, as if it were only to fan away the care that sits upon the troubled brow. Am I weary and downcast, one glance upward gives a new turn to my thoughts, as the waving tree-tops catch the burden from the spirit, and toss it into vacancy, where it is seen and felt no more. A SERIOUS aspect of the reports of the immigration for 1890 is the fact that the number of Germans, Scandinavians, and English, our best foreign elements, is diminished and the number of Slavs and Italians, our worst elements, increased. The Italians have grown 100% since 1889. The demand for cheap labor has brought them. The Russian persecution of the Jews accounts for the increase of Poles. But these people are many of them to be taken care of by the Baron Hirsch fund, some $2,500,000, established for the purpose of giving them homes on Western lands. The increase in Austrians and Bohemians has caused some alarm, since our anarchist population has come largely from those sources. It does not necessarily follow, however, that the present arrivals will swell that class. The total immigration last year was 491,000, sixty-four thousand more than in 1889. THE Tory party of Canada has served its opponent, the Liberal, to a most unexpected and irritating political trick. In eighteen months the general election of Canada was to come before the people. The Liberals had announced a platform of unrestricted reciprocity with the United States and had begun a campaign of education among the people on this issue. From recent signs it looked as if the country in eighteen months could be persuaded to that policy. The head of the Tory party, Sir John Macdonald, evidently feared so, at least, and in consequence dissolved Parliament and has gone before the country for a new election in March on an issue of restricted reciprocity. This issue, however, the Tories are neglecting and are making their capital by representing the H-Apr. Liberal platform as treason to the mother country. Reciprocity with the United States is a sensible plan for both countries, but undoubtedly Sir John's wily trick will defer it now for a long time. A MINISTERIAL crisis was threatened in France recently, brought on by the appearance of a new play, "Thermidor," laid in the times of the Revolution and holding up the leaders of the Reign of Terror in an unpleasant light. Friends of the Commune who saw the play, raised a commotion in the theater. The Cabinet in the interest of public order demanded that it be discontinued. Republicans in the Chamber attacked the government for this action and it looked for a time as if the ministry would be overturned. A country where a play representing scenes of one hundred years ago will raise fears of riot and governmental overthrow, certainly needs exactly such decisive action in removing irritating circumstances as that shown in interdicting "Thermidor." THE fortieth anniversary of the First National Woman's Rights convention has been celebrated. The contrasts between the opening and closing years of the period are vivid and encouraging. From a time when a woman's convention was ridiculed by the press as a "hen convention," we have come to a time when no courtesy of the public is withheld from such a gathering. From closed colleges and narrowest opportunities we have passed to privileges for higher education and original research. From a time when for a woman to earn her living save in the kitchen, at the spinning wheel, or by the needle, was almost a crime, we have come practically to unlimited employments. From a condition of legal servitude has come legal protection. From no political recognition whatever we have passed to twenty-two states allowing school suffrage, one municipal suffrage, and These solid gains meet one full suffrage. the consent of the highest public opinion in the country and must be recognized by any fair observer of events as a promise of complete rights in the near future. A BILL permitting all-night liquor-selling in the New York City saloons, was mentioned in the Note-Book for March as having passed the state senate. It has been defeated by the assembly, not because the latter is a more moral body, it is not; but because the vigorous protest of press and people raised |