It is All this, in its way, is legitimately allied to credit and culture; but it is a limited development, a one-sided aspect and influence. not that genuine play of the mind which lends vivacity to the Paris Salon, nor the intellectual content of the German Conversazione, but rather a provincial and egotistic phase of society and character; a partial and patent form of intercourse devoid of much that is rich and attractive in sympathy-much that is natural and human in life. It tends to sequestration of feeling, to parsimony in thought, to intolerance in opinion, to pedantry in expression. "Don't you dote upon Wordsworth?" asked a Boston belle of her astonished partner, as she crossed over in a quadrille. "I accuse T. Carlyle of inhospitality to my thought," wrote home a Boston philosopher, after pouring his views into the inattentive ear of the author of "Sartor Resartus" in the crowded Strand. Table-talk in the modern Athens is often cut and dried. It would not lack supply of excellence. The result of this exclusive reliance on brain this self-absorption to produce ideas, is to breed a perverse indifference to all but special intellectual objects—a want of natural human sympathy with any form of talent or kind of culture or phase of character outside of a prescriptive circle. To excel and not to coalesce with others is the aim. "I showed my ChessPlayer," said the ingenious Maelzel, "to my countrymen the Germans, and they said, it is a wonder-to the English, and they declared it a triumph'-to the French, and they exclaimed, ‘superbe, magnifique!'-to a Boston man, and he said, 'what you bet I no make one like him?'" Even in those kinds of mental development which presuppose impulse and susceptibility there is a rigid adherence to the intellectual, a studied repudiation of the impassioned. Byron and Burns were not immaculate, but they were soulful; and an element of human as well as ethereal fire is needed to keep aglow even the thoughts of genius, and transmit them with vital force to the ages. The same traits limit and harden social intercourse, and magnify trifles of conduct. It was, and perhaps is still, as damaging to a youth's reputation to be seen with his collar turned down and driving a gig as if detected in a convivial row. Hence it is There are "more things in heaven and earth than are dreamed of" in the Bostonian philosophy. There is a genius of character, a geniality of manners which have quite as much to do with social pleasure and individual faith and freedom as any gift or discipline of mind; there is a daily beauty in life to which the soul ministers more than the intellect; there is an interest in men and women as such, which transcends the charm of wit and the power of knowledge; there is a freshness and an adaptation of nature which are more auspicious inlets to truth and soul than the keenest intelligence or the most psychological curiosity; there is a glow of proverbial that dissipation in that latitude is temperament more humanizing than the most excessive and fatal, or ignored wholly; there is effective training, and a virtue in sentiment rarely any medium. Few have the moral courdeeper than that of sense; the critical is second-age to recognize the natural claims of social canary to the appreciative, to respond heartily is a more liberal function than to discriminate willfully. "A thing of beauty is a joy" as well as a subject of analysis; to enter into another's consciousness is nobler than to be absorbed in our own. Enlarged minds are broadly sympathetic. Our great artist declared himself "a wide liker;" the sweetest of English humorists, delicately keen in his literary insight, said that "Shaftesbury was not too high for him nor Jonathan Wild too low;" Burke, Franklin, and Webster found true companionship by the wayside of common life; and it was the proverbial philosophy of old that nothing human is alien. Michael Angelo reveled in the "harmless comedy of life;" and Sydney Smith fed his mind more from broad intercourse and observation than books. "Writing," said the Countess Hahn Hahn, "is but the surrogate of living." The "infinite variety" of nature is violated by a uniform local standard; and the provincial errors of the old Italian republics mar the full and free activity of individual endowments in the American Athens to-day. "Nature ever, didates; for years the so-called elite will "pass by on the other side" some gifted fellow-creature not of our set ;" and then after the more cosmopolitan seal of approval has been given at Washington, Newport, or New York, make the first advances to a most desirable acquaintance, sedulously avoided for years from fear of Mrs. Grundy. Dr. Spurzheim warned the Bostonians, when their city was far more individual than at present, that their local intermarriages and provincial exclusiveness would cause the stock to deteriorate and the soul to famish; he even suggested that an invasion of Southern Europeans would prove the best remedy. But the exigencies of trade and the facilities of travel are fast undermining all local traits and fusing social tendencies. A critic of the influence of this egotism and hardihood upon religious development, recognizes the same defect, limit, and perversity: "The higher faculties of the soul are disparaged in the interest of a fastidious intellectualism, a dainty taste, and a teasing criticism; the whole-hearted love for real men, women, and children in their ordinary relations, supplanted by a haughty preference for a cultivated clique or a mystical and transcendental communion, more exclusive than any aristocracy in the world; .. indifferentism, dilettanteism, and morbid criticism located in high places and making a dreary vacuity where should be a luminous centre of life." Out of the psychological tendencies and speculative beauties of these ethical teachings in the capital of New England sprang, in no small degree, the literary animus and the minor philosophies of her educated people; from the resistance of liberal Christians to Orthodox bigotry arose not a little of the independent thinking and intellectual self-assertion so characteristic of her children. The first ambition of the Harvard graduate, of cleverness and scholarship, nurtured in this atmosphere, was to excel as a pulpit orator; and when the fervor of youth began to cool and the function itself to become distasteful, he left the pulpit for the professor's mission; and, in mature years, when the "weary honors of successful ambition weighed like lead on the wearer," reverting to his original literary instincts, resorted to History for a more permanent fame. Such, with more or less variation the most noteworthy of his experiences in Boston the scene on a Sunday morning when Dr. Channing preached. Henry Ware's New-Year's Eve Sermon has a pensive charm in the recollecSaturday night is no longer a stated do- tion of those who used to linger thoughtfully mestic reunion. On that day, of old, salt cod- with him on "the shoal of time." Judge Story, fish, cider, and hickory-nuts formed the dinner, in his Consecration Address at Mount Auburn, with a due admixture of beets, carrots, and could invoke no more touching memory wherepork-scraps; whereby an Italian traveler in 1790 with to bring home to his audience the recollecrecords that he suffered the greatest indigestion | tion of the departed, and its claim to sepulchral of his life. On that night amusements were honor, than the silvery voice of Buckminster. foregone, children underwent special ablutions, and were sent early to bed, in anticipation of the great day of the week, signalized by extraordinary solemnity of walk and visage, clean attire, exemplary church attendance; a sirloin of beef and an Indian pudding between the services, followed by Catechism and singing of hymns in the evening; which regimen produced a curious periodical infirmity, that, according to George Combe, also once characterized the same weekly anniversary in Scotland, and was there called the "Sunday Headache." "Do you know what day it is?" was the stern parental query to the frivolous urchins. What the talk of Longinus and Plato was to the neo-chair; that for the political arena or diplomat's phytes of antiquity, the lectures of Abelard and Cousin to the Paris student, the discussions of the Medici gardens to the medieval Florentine scholar, such was the sermon to the Bostonian; for this his constitutional walk, his special toilet, his family procession to church were the care-in detail, has been the career of some of the ful preparatives: to listen, compare notes, discuss and criticise the Sunday discourse was the regular intellectual treat; "who is to preach ?" the anxious inquiry in the temple-porch. From the days of John Cotton, Dr. Cooper, Elliot, and Bishop Parker to those of Buckminster and Channing the pulpit was to him what the forum, the stage, and the academy is to other communities: his most endeared literary traditions were those of local pulpit oratory; the "minister" of his youth was the saintly genius most fondly enshrined in his memory; the most refined legacy of Puritanism no form of literature then and there held such memorable sway as the Homily. "It will raise the price of pews," said a thrifty member of a congregation, mov-oric, its local traits: these grew concise and etheing down the crowded aisle after a great success of this kind; "I don't care to have his sermons published, if you can not print the tone with them," said an old lady when it was proposed to issue a volume of her deceased pastor's discourses. We once saw in the private study of an Episcopal divine, shelves filled with the writ-in many of those philosophers: truly were some ings of the remarkable men who, in classic style and with eloquent sentiment, thus ministered to the eager and critical demand for preaching in the American Athens; and when we expressed our surprise that he should thus cherish the works of theological opponents, his reply was: "They are the only books I know that attractively expatiate on the philosophy of Christianity; they warm me to my sermonizing though I repudiate the dogmas." Basil Hall considered * Rev. A. H. Mayo. most intellectually ambitious Athenian men of letters, whose earliest aspiration was the sermon. Nor did the influence thereof end with the highly educated; laymen became eager for the honors of the homily, and in Sunday-schools and free chapels were heard the voices of tradesmen and mechanics. "What will the poor fellow do now?" asked the neighbor of a bankrupt of his friend; "fall back on the immortal soul," was the reply. The lyceum and the periodical press still further stimulated the minds of the modern Athenians, and oratory gradually became subtilized into philosophy. There the Yankee intellect was sublimated, retaining its acuteness, its rhet real under the inspiration of German literature and mystic colloquy. Then arose the transcendentalists, led off by Margaret Fuller: the origin, progress, and influence whereof are described in her Memoirs. With much eloquence, and no little insight, there was vast affectation of them described as expositors of ideas, those of which that were true were not new, and those which were new were not true. Half the apparent originality was verbal. Aphoristic language covered imitative thought; a cant of philosophy concealed familiar convictions. In a word, the shrewdness which the Yankee trader applied to barter, the Yankee thinker applied to literature; there was no spontaneous overflow, but a studied ingenuity; his intellectual work was a mosaic composed of gems garnered from a wide rather than harmonize the consciousness and the influences of intellectual life. An English visitor, one bright day in autumn, was encountered by a native on one of the bridges near Boston, with a servant following loaded with a thick over-coat, a spencer, a shawl, a pair of over-shoes, and an umbrella. "I'm sorry you're leaving us," said the latter. "Oh, I'm only taking a walk," replied John Bull. "I expect to use all these things in turn before I get home to dinner, your climate is so infernally changeable." A youth, born abroad, when he first danced in a quadrille at a party in the environs of Boston, remarked that the way his fair partner touched hands reminded him of" a and often a little explored range of lore. "Orphic sayings" were often a quaint remoulding of "proverbial philosophy;" and the "Dial" measured the life-throbs of society with no more accurate index than the town-clock, only with a mysterious picturesqueness singularly winsome to a class of minds to which simplicity of diction and integrity of thought are less impressive than oracular vagueness. Some of these aspirants for a new philosophy hunted for ideas with the sagacity wherewith their less thoughtful brethren "poke about for pence;" and they made the most of their capital by cunning phraseology-sceing, or professing to see, so deeply and so far, that merely sensible mortals were baffled, and sometimes gained over into descry-boy feeling for cucumbers in the dark." Is there ing something "very like a whale" in every cloud at which their oracular guides significantly gazed. Margaret, this is poetry," said a transcendentalist to his companion, as Fanny Ellsler gave a miraculous twirl to her extended leg. "No, Waldo," was the reply, "it is relig-losophers tell us of the influence of climate on ion." "Do you understand this ?" asked an auditor of a transcendental lecturer of the most sagacious lawyer in Massachusetts. "No," he answered; "but my daughters do." There, indeed, was the true field wherein these mystic seeds of desultory and fantastic thought flourished; the young were bewitched with the "Ideal," with "a Mission" and "Affinities;" enchanted by "the depth of their own nature," disgusted with the material and conventional; "there is hope," they felt, "in extravagance, there is none in routine;" self-reliance was more grand than receptivity. not a connection between these two illustrations of climate and manners? A certain scientific alternation of heat and cold destroys the malleability of metals, and at the same time increases their incisive quality; and why, if half that phi humanity is true, may not the prevalent alternation of winds modify character? Temperament has much to do with social manifestations, and temperature with temperament. A man or woman who has been accustomed for years to a sudden chill and glow, and has the physical vigor therefor, becomes reticent; the feelings, like the perspiration, are checked, and sensibility like the cuticle, grows impervious. The east wind, so grateful after sultriness, yet so bleakly penetrating and repulsive to delicate nerves, from its abrupt refrigerative effect has no little influence upon the social instincts of the Bos greetings that he is assured the sight of him is a satisfaction on the mere ground of companionship, as a human being, not because he can gratify curiosity, exchange criticisms, or is a member of the Mutual Admiration Society; the social feeling there is normal, and irrespective of intellectual or financial distinction. Let him promenade Beacon Street between churches and the salutation will be curt or curious, rarely warmed by the zest of fellowship. "When did you come? How long are you going to stay? What are you about?" says the Bostonian to the occasional visitor. "How are you? I'm delighted to see you. Come in to dinner?" says the Gothamite. Yet time has wonderfully corrected and har-tonian. monized what was noxious in this "entusymu- The denizen of New York in his Sunday walk sy." It was in the last analysis but an instinct-in Fifth Avenue encounters such pleasurable ive protest against the formality and coldness of the intellectual atmosphere and social limits wherein these fresh souls dwelt. Moreover, expression has become definite with the really gifted of those who were the recognized expositors of the new school; they have become more practical in theory, direct in utterance. Emerson's later writings are more legitimate specimens of the English essay; chaste as Addison, tolerant as Montaigne, and often as practically suggestive as Steele or Sydney Smith. We still, however, find the weird in opposition to the human spirit; the constant assertion of will and self-reliance as the essence of the true "Conduct of Life"-indicative of a temperament wherein "the blood and judgment are not Boston is a good place to have the conceit so well commingled" as to make a representa- taken out of you, and just as good a one to have tive thinker, but one whose clerical descent it made chronic; want of sympathy does the and New England discipline has concentrated one, cliqueism the other. Most people there into an intellectual, self-sufficing gleaner of are bookish, few genial; men are esteemed as ideas, rather than a comprehensive and sym- lions more than as brothers; and women as pathetic human interpreter-"a polished Puri- brilliant rather than lovable. "What does he tan with the piety left out," as he has been clev- know ?" is the query regarding each new social erly described. Climate, culture, organization, candidate. "How did you like 's speech ?" and the prevailing kind of social life have much asked one of the auditors of his youthful friend. to do with all the erratic phenomena of Athe- "I was thinking how much better I could do it nian development; they refine rather than ex-myself," was the characteristic reply. You can pand, clarify rather than warm, individualize find more fluent and suggestive talkers in Bos ton in a day than you can in New York in a month; but among the latter there is a ready HAPPY AND UNHAPPY MARRIAGES. T is generally conceded that upon the institu hospitality for your spontaneous self, while the ioner marriage turns the most vital inter former meets each idea with critical comment ests of the civil condition of life. But the mar- How is it, then, that the holiest condition in which the sexes can exist together, and which forms the very pivot of civilization-how is it that such a noble institution is at once the most sacred of human conditions, and the indirect origin of the gravest evils of this life? A dinner with the Atlantic Club, a visit to Cambridge, a chat in some lawyer's or editor's office, a rummage at the Antiquarian Book-Store, an hour at the City Library or the Athenæum, or a colloquy with Longfellow or Holmes, Dr. Walker or Dr. Hedge, Emerson, Parsons, Mrs. Howe, Henry James, William Hunt, or Whipple, will soon convince any one that the intellectual prestige of Boston is well founded, and its best social resources charmingly available. The names of Story, Channing, Quincy, and Everett are, alas! inscribed at Mount Auburn; Webster and Prescott are no more; Theodore Parker survives in his disciples. Is it destiny that inflicts upon the human being all the torments which attend unmated mankind, or, as the alternative, offers this being a condition full of anxiety and tribulation-and perhaps woe? Does a perfection, seen in the anticipated future, so thoroughly fade in the reality in which it comes to be clothed? Or does society breathe the curse of staleness upon the very condition of life to which it owes its most cherishable privileges? To all these que At least as regards marriage, it is not commonly true that we get too little for our pains. The trouble is, that we expect too much. Hence we are frequently astonished, and even mortified, that our partner for life does not possess the very desiderata which, in truth, we ourselves lack. Besides, it is not flattering to be charged with ignorance concerning self-imposed duties; and when the question turns upon conjugal obligations, there is a sort of self-justification in attributing to incompatibility of disposition the origin of numerous domestic troubles. Sweetness of disposition and the reverse, like courage, has been pretty evenly dispensed to the human family. And the average disposition of an individual is oftener governed by the view he takes of the common events of life than by an inherent peculiarity of character. But even though this fact be generally admitted, the practical application is rejected; because men and women are unwilling to believe that their domestic bliss or misery mainly results from inconsiderable acts involving neither marked harmony or contrariety of disposition, nor any deep-working of the moral nature. Mr. and Mrs Jones possess a fair average of good disposition. Mrs. Jones finds her recrea A few of the solid and accomplished men of Boston lag behind the times, and are candidates for the diet recently prescribed by a wit for such perverse citizens - Ketch-up: there are evidences that some of them have already taken homeopathic doses of the same. Despite the encroachments of a foreign and rural population in music or painting, or in both; or pertion, the bereavements and transitions of society, and the local changes, there is fresh and noble proof that Boston is true to her birth-right and loyal to her patriotic inheritance. The list of her martyred sons in the war for the Union, inincludes the most honored of her family names on the heroic roll, so tenderly cherished and worthily commemorated—Dwight, Cary, Dehon, Revere, Putnam, Lowell, Shaw, and others; so that the returning native can solace his regrets for all that is passed away, by the hallowed memories that have newly crowned his birth-place with sacred fame. haps she evinces a lively interest in church matters during the week. Mr. Jones does not comprehend "four-quarter time," and can not appreciate Titian. Indeed, he does not wish to cultivate or admire either art-a very evident fact, because he rings his changes upon a stale old joke about "four-quarters" and "five-twenties" at the expense of the former; and he insists that, after all, the prettiest combination of color is red, white, and blue. And as for occasions of outburst of this questionable witticism, could there be a more appropriate time than upon the Wednesday and Friday evenings when he Mr. Thompson admires what is essentially termed "home music," while his wife finds no enjoyment in the art outside the opera-house. It is quite a fortuitous circumstance if she does not take lessons at $100 per quarter; and a positive mercy if poor Thompson's home be not invaded by a crowd of fiercely mustached vagabonds and dowdy, unwashed females. Enough is here disclosed to show that considerable material for unhappiness lies not in the deep recesses of married life, but at the surface of domestic existence. Thus, they who appear happy in the eye of society often fail to appreciate each other's pursuits through unwillingness to nourish a kindred sympathy, and the evil lays the ground-work of ultimate coldness-if not of unfaithfulness. It is a good thing to behave well in society; but it is a great deal better to act justly at home. Truly, a laudable desire for public esteem begetteth many a courteous action, but it is in the inner, the unseen, the sacred apartment of our home that the pride of goodness and truth gives birth to happiness. the game does not pay. But we frequently grin and bear many little annoyances which a little thoughtfulness would overcome. What if our husband grumbles a little over an indifferent breakfast? Why not suffer our wife to sing her doleful tale about the shortcomings of a delinquent servant? Poor as it is, the former would not sell his meal for twenty times its value. And for the rest, it is poor consolation to give sharp advice to a wife when all she desires from her husband is a little sympathetic grumble. We greatly fear that men and women think too much about one another, and too little for each other. The love of a man may be actually enthralled by very humble means: the homely but ever ready slippers at the evening fireside; the dainty bit which his wife has prepared (with a ten minutes' labor) expressly for his evening meal; or the little display of her accomplishments, sweetly granted at the close of the day. And surely the love of woman were cheaply earned and secured by little deeds and even sacrifices. When alone, she dreams of us as wholly immersed in the business of the day. But the small basket of early or rare fruit, or the new ribbon, which we might so easily bring her now and then, would tell her its own little tale-that she is in our heart even when we are immersed in the duties and excitements of traffic. Taking an average condition in life, man's contentment of mind is considerably according to his own making; and likewise, in his domestic relations, his happiness lies greatly in his hands. This should be a cheering reflection, though we fear it is not commonly nourished. What if we slat our things around now and But it is nevertheless a true one. Because, in then? Pray don't look sour. Remember that the present case, if the married life be thorough- we are men; and men are rarely celebrated for ly analyzed, a majority of suffering will be found the proper ordering of the clothes-press. And to originate in errors of omission rather than in as for the things which our wife carries about those of commission; and in errors of omission whenever she travels—and truly their name is lefrequently lies the evil in question. The truth gion! -why be over-troubled about them? Pick is, that in doing a kindly act, did we but dis-up her parasol, throw her veil over your arm; play one half the zeal which animates us in concealing the consequences of a bad deed, many of the pains and penalties of our earthly career would be avoided, and a peaceful death would be the closing scene of a life of truth and love. Unfortunately, the errors of our partners reflect themselves in an undue degree upon our character, and stamp our reciprocative actions with a portion of the faultiness to which these actions owe their origin. It is so gratifying to be a corrector of error-an avenger of truth! We forget our own fallibility, and we increase to an indefinite degree the very ills which we had desired to dissipate. The rare power of man to gaze undismayed upon the vicissitudes which beset his path through life, proclaims the exalted characteristics of his sex, and entitles him to love, to cherish, and to ennoble the being who is so necessary to his happiness. Yet, from its very nature, his noble equipoise is often lost in the petty vexations of the moment. It has been said that were mankind deprived of the notoriety attending a public death there would be no martyrs. Truly it were difficult to play martyr if none stood by to applaud; and for a similar reason, perhaps, it is a difficult thing to play hero in one's own house. There is nothing to be gained by it carry her traps. Of course these things trouble you. Whom do they not trouble? But you would be far more sorely troubled were she gone forever, and if these very sources of annoyances were carefully packed away in some dark closet. She may not reward you on the spot for all your trouble, but there are ninetynine chances in a hundred that she feels grateful for your aid, and she will soon learn to miss you when you are absent. In the case of interested marriages it seems cruel that the lives of such couples should appear to give the lie, on the score of happiness, to their less sordid but more noisy neighbors. If, however, it prove a source of consolation to these latter, they should remember that "The jingling of the guinea helps The hurt that honor feels." And, in the end, it is very questionable if the inconveniences of life attending disinterested marriages is not invariably to be preferred to the apparent harmony existing between individuals united solely through mercenary motives, who, by tacit consent, agree to disagree; and who consequently lead a life of mock tranquillity. One is almost tempted to believe that the world is doomed to teem with men and women who, amidst their petty bickerings, lose sight of the |