if Mr. Arnold's theory of the benign influence of equality is correct, is it that we wholly miss France's good and agreeable type of life and manners? How is it that, if an educated American talks to a factory operative or farm hand, there will be on the part of one a condescending desire to avoid condescension, and on the part of the other a bumptious self-assertion? Why is it that not even the best disposed observer can discover in the American laboring classes that quickness and keenness of intelligence, that native tact and grace, which Mr. Arnold and Mr. P. G. Hamerton find in the French peasantry, and which raise that peasantry, in one sense, to a level with the cultivated classes?

The inevitable answer seems to be that precisely as our inherited sense for conduct has, on the whole, succeeded in maintaining its ascendency against the influences of immigration, the civil war, the constant shifting of population, so our inherited Puritanism, with the hideousness and ennui of its life and manners, on the whole maintains its evil ascendency against the influences of the humanizing force of equality.

Any improvement must be slow, the work of generations. It lies in us of today, by careful examination and proper attention, to assist in bringing into existence a better type of life a generation or two generations before it would otherwise appear. This is the duty which rests especially upon the dissatisfied: to make a comfortable world uncomfortable, if comfort means stagnation; to arouse the heavy slumberers; to create a proper discontent, - for discontent is the gift of the gods to man, by which he may raise himself to their level.

And it seems the necessary result of all this is to declare war upon Puritanism, that we may free ourselves from the bondage in which we have lain for two hundred years. It is chiefly Puritanism that lies in the way of our profiting by the equality we have. Were England to adopt Mr. Arnold's ideas, and introduce equality in inheritance and descent, the type of manners and

life would continue to be as unlovely as it is to-day, and as ours is. I do England an injustice, perhaps. There is a refuge for an Englishman who is oppressed by the hideousness of English life: he has a history in which he can take refuge; he has a past, with its monuments and bequests; he has a country, nearly every inch of which bears testimony to past greatness and present stability, a country which has in the highest degree the beauty of civilization, in spite of so many "counties overhung by smoke."

But we who are born in the midst of a narrower and harsher Puritanism even than that which environs an Englishman, we have no past, no national tradition, no history, with one melancholy exception; and the hideousness of the type of life and manners begotten by Puritanism is emphasized by our unlovely villages, by the barrenness of our rectangular cities, by our ragged, illtended country, where the only beauty is that of unhumanized nature. The consequence is that when a man seeks to break the bonds of Puritanism, to burst forth from the prison where our spirit has lain for two hundred years enchained, he almost inevitably becomes an iconoclast, a radical by profession, not for truth's sake, but for radicalism's sake. And this is not a proper condition.

These are the two cases we have to meet. To strike the mean; to ease the bonds gradually, so that freedom need not mean excess; to come easily to the proper point; to habituate ourselves to the light, so that we shall not go about running our heads against blind w all this will be no easy work. On ins proper performance rests. I believe, 10 hope of our ever acquiring a leat type of life and manners: o per anne ing into our daily existence some thing tĚ the goodness and agreable f

of our adding to our one pre am civilizing power, the power start another, the power of so manners, which shall be late it.

DURING the late war an unkempt and illiterate Norwegian, who in some inexplicable way had acquired an Irish accent in learning the English language, succeeded by false representations in recruiting from the hospitals of the State of M a number of the abler-bodied and feebler-minded patients. These he equipped with uniforms and utensils. How he made the requisitions, or who approved them, no one ever knew. It was early in the rebellion, and before the kindly volunteer quartermaster had been chilled by contact with the second auditor of the treasury.

De V- (he had a French name to adorn his Scandinavian origin and cast á romantic spell about his accent), having enlisted his invalids without authority, and holding no higher commission than a lieutenant's uniform of that amorphous grace which only the deft fingers of lovely woman can communicate to male garments, now procured transportation for his detachment, with the same mysterious facility that had attended his other operations, and soon reached Louisville. There he reported to General Buell.

The mode of dealing with a self-appointed officer in command of anatomical subjects not having been prescribed in the course of study at West Point, that distinguished soldier was at a loss how to dispose of our hero, -being, indeed, as much amazed at his appearance as Cadmus may have been at the crop springing from his eccentric husbandry. Happily, the chief of artillery came to the rescue with the suggestion that the military estrays should be assigned to temporary duty with a certain regular battery, then somewhat deficient in numbers. This advice was eagerly adopted by the bewildered Buell, and the emaciated cohorts, with their very irregular officer, were ordered to report accordingly. The officers of the battery learned with some astonishment that their little

band of veterans, whose youngest noncommissioned officer wore three service stripes, was to be reinforced by Lieutenant De V- and his dubious detachment, and waited with interest the coming of those Falstaffian allies.

When at last they arrived there was something sadly ludicrous in the appearance of the shambling creatures; and there was something revolting as well as ludicrous in the bearing of their coarsejawed and carroty-haired leader, to whom they served but as shadows of the names on the muster-roll that should bring him his commission and his pay.

The officers refused to admit De Vto their mess, and failing other companionship he was driven to the cheerful society of his deluded followers, who had already begun to entertain for him the most violent dislike of which their parting souls were capable. Many of the unhappy wretches pined away amid the cold and wet, and De V- watched with anxious solicitude the gradual melting of his forlorn hope; he feared the governor would not issue his commission, and he knew the mustering officer would not swear him in on a roll of dead men,

no superintendents of national cemeteries having at that time been created. Fortunately for De V―, the survival of a few of the unfittest gave him still a frail tenure upon the hesitating pay master, who much dreaded the disallowance of his vouchers in the case of this nondescript lieutenant; and the arrival of a half dozen or more fresh consumptives placed him upon a sufficient warfooting to secure the coveted muster.

A few weeks after this event, Lieutenant De V heard, as he marched, the distant roar of the guns at Pittsburgh Landing, and at day-break on the morning after this ominous sound fell upon his ears the battery was in action on the left of Nelson's division. Hardly were the guns unlimbered before a man was killed. This was a brutal shock to the

sensitive De V. A deathly pallor overspread his countenance, and like the banker in the Hunting of the Snark, of whom it is written that when he met the fabled Bandersnatch "so great was his fright that his waistcoat turned white," even his red whiskers seemed to lose their fire and take an ashen hue. He nevertheless affected the deepest interest in the welfare of the battery, and, judging from his own sensations that retreating was the serious occupation of war, rode up to the captain, whom he asked, in a palsied voice, if the men were supplied with spikes. Upon receiving a negative answer from that thoughtless officer, he urged the necessity of procuring them at once, and volunteered to perform that dangerous service.

The captain, exchanging a wink with his subordinates, gave the proper orders, and the supernumerary De V

start

ed immediately for the Landing. His horse, nearly as frightened as he, "fled like a shadow," and soon bore our hero to the desired haven; where, as rumor after reported through the cook, he secluded himself in the battery wagon, under the lid of which, carefully closed, he remained, half-suffocated, until the noise of the cannonading died away.

That the rumor was not a lying one was proven by his not rejoining the battery until the close of the action; and its credibility is further confirmed by the following incident. The childish delight which De V-, to whom wearing a sash diagonally was a rapture, took in performing the functions of officer of the day caused the frequent imposition on him of the duties of any officer of the command whose laziness craved indulgence. On one of these occasions, when De V- —was enjoying his sash in the vicinity of the guard-tent, he chanced to arouse the ire of an old soldier whose chronic incarceration made his casual sober appearance in the ranks a matter of surprise. This venerable vagrant, who shared with his comrades in the general scorn for De V—, drunkard though he was, felt it humiliation to stand in the line when the guard and prisoners were turned out in honor of that officer's visit.

A life-long respect for shoulder - straps and familiarity with the direful consequences of such an act prevented his openly insulting our hero; and yet he longed to do so. He was a man of dry humor, and it was not one of his least comical inspirations that led him on this memorable day to knock vigorously on the lid of the battery wagon, and call, in stentorian tones, "Come out, lieutenant; the fight's all over. Nothing could have galled De V– more; and yet he was powerless to revenge himself. The punishment of the old soldier would have been confession, and so that malicious inebriate withdrew to the guard-tent to chuckle with impunity over his victory.

No

Not long after the event just recounted, De V — was enabled to show that, if wanting in pluck, he was not incapable of heroic self-sacrifice. The battery was ordered on a reconnoissance. sooner had the news reached his ears than with an air of mournful resignation he appeared before the captain, and, expressing his confident belief that all the other officers wished to go to the front, intimated that should it be necessary for an officer to remain in camp with the baggage he would not raise the standard of revolt in the event of that loathsome duty falling to him.

While the army was in that comfortless bivouac of ten days on the field of battle which succeeded Shiloh, one of the officers of the battery, suffering under an acute attack of that evanescent devoutness which is often the sequel to escape from danger, began reading the Bible aloud to his comrades. De Vwas a consummate hypocrite, and, though lying and dishonest, affected an austere piety. He was much pleased with the Bible-reading, and fancied that now he might make his counterfeit religion a sort of passport into the society of the officers. So one evening, when our biblical student had finished his reading, and was engaged in the spiritual task of mixing a cocktail for next day's matins, De V approached the official group, and, regardless of the coolness of his reception, signified his approval of the outburst of Christian feeling indicated

He

by the Bible-reading. This courteous conduct had no softening effect on the officers, and, finding them inaccessible through sympathy, De V- ventured an appeal to their vanity. There were few soldiers who were not gratified to see their names in print in connection with some deed of gallantry. As De V— had no gallantry, he conceived the print to be the principal thing. therefore remarked that he had in contemplation writing a letter to the New York Independent, descriptive of the great spiritual awakening caused by the horrors of Shiloh. The officers did not covet renown on the ground that they had been scared out of their dissolute courses, and moreover feared that the Independent, with the undeviating inaccuracy of true journalism, would assign the Norseman to their regiment, a mortification too heavy to be borne; and so this handsome offer of celebrity was rejected.

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De V's gorge rose at this second rebuff, and he cast about for some means to make the iron enter the soul of one officer at least. He changed the subject of conversation, and, in the guise of a seeker after truth, with cunningly malicious humility, submitted to the captain a point in tactics. Captain," said he, "yesterday when I was out at drill with Lieutenant Gawain, I heard him give the command, Limber to the rear!' This morning I heard Lieutenant Galahad give the command, 'Limber to the front!' Lieutenant Gawain, being a graduate of West Point, I suppose was right.”

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6

They were both right," said the laconic captain.

The ribald jeers that greeted his discomfiture excited in the bosom of De Va rage his prudence could no longer stem. His soul was in arms. The blood of his glorious ancestors, gone to drink mead in Valhalla, boiled in his veins. Not the god Thor when he smote the serpent Midgard could have been more terrible than was De V— as he hissed forth the words, "I may not know much about tactics, but I can make a better pair of sewed boots than any officer in the regular army." Up to this time

he had modestly concealed his previous occupation; but the violence of his anger and the strength of his desire to assert some kind of superiority to his persecutors had rent the veil.

After this ebullition of temper De V courted solitude. Zimmermann could not have been more lone. But soon there came to him a need for advice. General Nelson had offered a reward of five hundred dollars for a spy to enter Corinth, and the cupidity of De V——— had been excited thereby. His avarice seemed about to serve him as a substitute for courage. To the officers it was like a gleam of hope. A happy termination of their relations with De Vseemed approaching. They became genial; they treated him with courtesy; they adorned him, as it were, with garlands, for the patriotic sacrifice. Not one of them withheld words of encouragement and cheer. They gave him an exoteric God speed, and an esoteric devil go with you.

They knew, to be sure, that his intelligence was too feeble for a spy's; but what cared they for that? They caressed the beatific vision of his sudden death so soon as he should penetrate the enemy's line. But, alas, he did not go. His courage oozed away like that of Bob Acres, odds gibbets and halters! and the disappointed officers were compelled to await the tardy recognition of his services by the governor of M—, who, not long after, removed from the battery, which had been supplied with recruits from the dépot, the few remaining unburied corpses. They were added to a skeleton M battery, to the captaincy of which the governor immediately promoted De V, exhibiting therein that ready appreciation of a thoroughly worthless officer which so signally characterized the average war governor, and enabled him to avoid bestowing rewards where they were due with such unerring certainty.

De V, soon after his promotion, managed to get ordered to the permanent garrison of Nashville, where, for the remainder of the rebellion, his military genius rusted in inglorious ease.

H. A. Huntington.

To read Mr. Henry James, Jr., is to experience a light but continuous gratification of mind. It is to be intellectually tickled, provided one is capable of such an exercise. It is to take a pleasure so simple and facile that it seems only one step removed from physical content in the lavish cleverness of an almost incessantly witty writer, a pleasure enhanced, no doubt, by a lurking sense that one must be a little clever one's self in order to keep pace with such dazzling mental agility. To people who have read a good deal of French, and read it because they liked it, and why else should an Englishman or an American ever advance in that literature beyond the absurd Racine of his schooldays?the writing of Mr. James has the additional interest of offering the best of proof that the English language approaches the French much more nearly than is usually supposed, in its capacity for what may be called current epigram. Occasionally, also, Mr. James comes strikingly near to showing that our "sober speech" might, under proper cultivation, blossom as richly as that of the lively Gaul, into what Mr. Mallock calls "that perfect flower of modern civilization, the innuendo." But to do our countryman justice, he is too truly refined to indulge more than sparingly in this exotic species of literary ornament. The clean turns and crisp graces of his style are such as peculiarly befit an essayist, and some of his critical sketches are extremely admirable; but he is too freaky and irresponsible to be always a safe guide, even in matters of bookish opinion, and it is as a novelist only that we propose to consider him.

Within the last three years, Mr. James has written two noteworthy stories, both of which appeared first in these pages.

One and the same purpose animates them, and that is to illustrate the different types of character and manners produced by European and

American civilization; or, more strictly speaking, by European civilization and American semi-barbarism. On this one point our author keeps all his bright faculties intently focused, and studies the human specimens, which he has first carefully selected, with the methodical minuteness and ecstatic patience of a microscopist.

In The American, as the readers of The Atlantic undoubtedly remember, the hero, Christopher Newman, a self-made Yankee who has gathered a great fortune before the age of thirty-five, and gone to Paris to spend it, naïvely resolves to take him a wife out of the Faubourg St. Germain, gets the entrée in a sufficiently unlikely manner of that difficult stronghold and very nearly succeeds in carrying out his project. His wife is in fact promised him by her high-bred and fastidious family.

But

when these potentates see an unexpected chance of marrying her to an imbecile Irish lord they break their pledge. The passive bride, whose heart had really been won, has just spirit enough to baffle them by going into a Carmelite convent, and the American, after one rueful promenade round the walls of his lady's sepulchre, takes the self which he had made away to parts unknown.

In The Europeans, which came as a kind of per contra to The American, we have a brother and sister of mixed Swiss and American parentage, who have passed all their lives (they are both in the neighborhood of thirty) on the continent of Europe. The sister, Eugenia, has made a morganatic marriage with a German prince, which, for state reasons, the reigning family desire to annul; and the brother, Felix, though a pleasant fellow and a clever artist, is virtually a penniless adventurer; so the two come to seek their fortune among their American cousins. These prove to

1 The Europeans. By HENRY JAMES, JR. Boston: Houghton, Osgood & Co. 1878.