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wars, and to support their tremendous military establishments, become too severe to be tolerated any longer. At the present rate of things, it seems as if that must happen soon; for the burden thus imposed on Europe now amounts to over fifteen hundred millions of dollars annually. Then governments must disband their standing armies, - idle locusts, devouring the vitality of the land, and make them work like other men. The absence of the provoking preparations and of the chafing readiness for war will lessen its likelihood. The long-debauched sentiment that hungers for martial glory will have a chance to rectify itself. Arsenals and forts will be deserted, dismantled. The bristling jealousy of selfish nationalities will be lulled, grudges and hostilities be forgotten, in the conquering light and love of the great truth that universal humanity should compose one family, seeking one good.

That gradual increase of ethical sensitiveness and humane sympathy which we see going on, ameliorating cruel customs, outgrowing old standards of judgment and sentiment, and banishing more and more of injustice and blindness, is a trustworthy harbinger of golden days yet in store for the scarred and weary nations. The enslavement or massacre of captives, the judicial ordeal and combat, duelling, piracy, promiscuous privateering, are stranded in the past. The same progress, continuing a little farther, will insure the total repudiation and disuse of war. For that consummation, so devoutly to be wished, every good man ought to labor earnestly in his place,

"Till the war-drums throb no longer, and the battle-flags are furled, In the parliament of man, the federation of the world."

Plainly enough, the organization of deadly strife is no eternal necessity of human nature or society, only a temporary necessity or natural concomitant of certain stages of their development. Its frequency and severity are aggravated in due pace with the ignorance and fierceness of men and the inefficiency of ethical considerations, diminished and softened by every increase of knowledge and sympathy, every energizing ascent of the moral law. The only solid justification of international war is when, as has unquestionably happened many a time, and may again, on a fair judgment of the whole case, it is 5TH S. VOL. IX. NO. III.

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clear that the lasting evils inflicted by one people on another are outweighingly worse than the transient suffering and slaughter of the battle-field, and cannot be otherwise removed. Then war is a right of humanity. But it is a right to be exercised how rarely, how solemnly, under what a profound sense of its awful responsibility!

In contemplating the history of past wars, it is shocking to think from what trivial causes they generally sprang, and for what wicked ends they were oftenest prosecuted. We do not read of a powerful civilized people taking possession of the territory of a weak barbarous people for the purpose of enlightening them, planting the arts and sciences among them, making them prosperous and happy. But hundreds of times great nations have harried the realms of their inferiors for plunder, slaves, and tribute. The country that esteems herself the summit and pattern of the earth does not declare war against Ethiopia to make her quit intestine strifes, slavetrading, and beastly squalor, and learn to read, and write, and build, and till the soil, and reclaim the desert. No; she only declares war against the Chinese to compel them to eat opium till they are yellow idiots. Force has been freely used to do evil and spread devastation, but not to do good and diffuse blessings. The sanguinary quarrels of nations have not usually originated in any general wrong or popular wish, but from individual caprice, personal considerations. Because an ambassador is imprudent or incompetent, because a potentate is irascible and vindictive, half the world must fly to arms, and soak a continent in gore. The Crimean war was actually owing to the obstinate pride of one man, Nicholas Romanoff. An indecent brawler, the drunken Borland, got into trouble at Greytown, and, if England's hands had not been full, perhaps we should have had a war with her in hot haste. An arrogant and mischievous emissary, the passionate Soulé, went to Madrid, rampant for Cuba; and because he was neither successful nor treated with overmuch deference, we heard portentous mutterings about a war with Spain. But when Russia trampled Poland into her bloody grave, hoped she might sleep well, and the Holy Alliance said "Amen," where were the other nations of Europe that they tamely al

lowed such an execrable deed to be done? And when Austria tried the same game with Hungary, but was throttled by the puissant Magyar till she screamed to Russia for help, where again were the indignant peoples of the world? It should seem that wars may be waged for the ends of tyranny without interference, but must never be undertaken for the ends of righteousness and beneficence!

Surely this state of morals cannot always last. It could not endure a single day, were it not for the transmitted habits and feelings of brutal ages, whose example and authority, outgrown in other respects, are still fastened on us in this. It is time this awful inheritance from the past were flung off. There is, in the just order of things, no conceivable reason why the profession of arms should take precedence of every other, and reap the honors of the earth. Only because it used to be so, the sluggish moving spirit of society permits it yet. Now that the arbitration of private reason and conscience, or of an international tribunal, is so feasible, and might so easily be made final, there is no longer, except in the rarest exigencies, justification for enlightened countries in shedding each other's blood, and blasting each other's fields.

War was a necessary phase in the evolution of the social destinies of humanity, a transition phase in the passage of society to perfection, like the Saurian epoch in geology, that prepared the way for the coming of man. We have now properly advanced beyond that phase. It is high time we were done with it, leaving it henceforth to the cougars in the jungle, the microscopic devils in the water-drop.

Some time, please God, it shall be so. The world shall yield more glory to France for opening a railroad over the Isthmus of Suez, than for her whole war in Algiers, with its untold cost of treasure and life. More true honor shall redound to England from the West-Indian act of emancipation, than from all her victorious campaigns, though their trophies arch land and flood, and across the centuries their chaplets deck so many famous heads, from Alfred to Havelock. The sword of Mars shall be lowered and laid aside, while the sceptre of Christ is lifted above the kneeling nations. The horrid scythe of destruction, dripping from its bloody swaths, shall be

hung up high on the tree of antiquity, to rust unused forever. Then the man of sweetest and richest nature, most exalted by culture and virtue, who loves his fellows best, and does them the largest service, shall be selected to wear the choicest honors of the world. Then in all the holy mountain of the earth the human family shall dwell together in mutual love and blessing, and never hurt each other more.

18

The Novels and Miscellaneous Works of DANIEL DE FOE. Oxford: Printed by D. A. Talboys for Thomas Tegg,

vols.

London.

THE family of Foe was probably of Norman origin, but the prefix De was added by the subject of this sketch. Daniel De Foe was born in the parish of St. Giles, Cripplegate, London, in 1661. His grandfather was a substantial yeoman, and even kept a pack of hounds; but the family becoming reduced, his father, James Foe, followed the occupation of a butcher in St. Giles.

Though sprung from this humble parentage, yet our author enjoyed many early advantages both in moral and educational training. His family were strict non-conformists, and Daniel was baptized by a minister of their own persuasion, and educated at a dissenters' school. As a boy he was noted for his courage, and was from habit and principle an enemy to the doctrine of non-resistance. This early tendency was the origin of that manly independence and magnanimity which characterize his works. During his youth, when strong apprehension was felt of a Popish government, and it was expected that printed Bibles would become rare, many pious people occupied themselves in copying the sacred writings in short-hand. Young De Foe applied himself to a similar task, and he tells "that he worked like a horse till he had written out the whole Pentateuch, when he grew so tired that he was willing

us,

to risk the rest." As the dissenters were excluded from the universities, they naturally established academies and schools of their own. To one of these, at Newington-Green, Daniel was sent at the age of fourteen. He was intended for the clerical profession, though he afterwards engaged in trade. In this academy, while he was sufficiently versed in the classics and in polite learning, particular attention was paid to the English language. And to this circumstance we owe in part that pure and idiomatic Saxon style which renders his writings among the best in our native tongue. To his early religious teaching is due not only the peculiar bias of his faith, which made him a stern and consistent partisan of liberty and toleration throughout the shifting phases of his stormy public life, but also that sincere piety which glows in all his works, and gives them their moral charm.

Nearly threescore years had passed over his head before De Foe wrote those works of fiction which have rendered his name a household word in every land where children read or where stories are told. Yet he was born a writer; and he began his long polemic career with a political pamphlet, written before he had reached his twenty-first year. Partisan strife, and the feuds in both church and state, which penetrated every home in England in the seventeenth century, gave to his earlier writings a prominence and importance which subsequent times have failed fully to indorse. Yet these party publications were so voluminous, so good, and exercised so important an influence on his fortunes and happiness, that they demand a brief review at our hands. His earliest effort- Speculum Crape-Gownorum was a satiric attack on the clergy of the day; his next, a pamphlet advocating the cause of Austria against the Turks. He wisely thought it more conducive to the safety of Christendom that Popish Austria should oppress the Protestants, than that both Catholics and Protestants should be overthrown by the Mahometans.

When only in his twenty-fourth year, we find him in arms for the Duke of Monmouth. Returned to more peaceful pursuits, though he mingled somewhat in the controversies of James the Second's reign, yet he was ostensibly engaged for some years in the business of a hosier, in London. Sharing proba