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your temper, if you can,— for one angry man is as good as another; restrain them from injury, promptly, completely, and with the least possible injury, just as in the case of maniacs,-and when you have got rid of them, or got them tied hand and foot so that they can do no mischief, sit down and contemplate them charitably, remembering that nine-tenths of their perversity comes from outside influences, drunken ancestors, abuse in childhood, bad company, from which you have happily been preserved, and for some of which you, as a member of society, may be fractionally responsible. I think also that there are special influences which work in the blood like ferments, and I have a suspicion that some of those curious old stories I cited may have more recent parallels. Have you ever met with any cases which admitted of a solution like that which I have mentioned?

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I HAVE been for some months established in this place, turning the main crank of the machinery for the manufactory of accomplishments superintended by, or rather worked to the profit of, a certain Mr. Silas Peckham. He is a poor wretch, with a little thin fishy blood in his body, lean and flat, long-armed and large-handed, thick-jointed and thin-muscled, you know those unwholesome, weak-eyed, half-fed creatures, that look not fit to be round among live folks, and yet not quite dead enough to bury. If you ever hear of my being in court to answer to a charge of assault and battery, you may guess that I have been giving him a thrashing to settle off old scores; for he is a tyrant, and has come pretty near killing his principal lady-assistant with overworking her and keeping her out of all decent privileges.

Helen Darley is this lady's name, twenty-two or three years old, I should

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think,- - a very sweet, pale woman, daughter of the usual country-clergyman, -thrown on her own resources from an early age, and the rest: a common story, but an uncommon person, very. All conscience and sensibility, I should say,— a cruel worker,—no kind of regard for herself, - — seems as fragile and supple as a young willow-shoot, but try her and you find she has the spring in her of a steel crossbow. I am glad I happened to come to this place, if it were only for her sake. I have saved that girl's life; I am as sure of it as if I had pulled her out of the fire or water.

Of course I'm in love with her, you say, we always love those whom we have benefited: "saved her life, - her love was the reward of his devotion," etc., etc., as in a regular set novel. In love, Philip? Well, about that, I love Helen Darley-very much: there is hardly anybody I love so well. What a noble creature she is! One of those that just go right on, do their own work and everybody else's, killing themselves inch by inch without ever thinking about it,singing and dancing at their toil when they begin, worn and saddened after a while, but pressing steadily on, tottering by-and-by, and catching at the rail by the wayside to help them lift one foot before the other, and at last falling, face down, arms stretched forward ·

Philip, my boy, do you know I am the sort of man that locks his door sometimes and cries his heart out of his eyes,—that can sob like a woman and not be ashamed of it? I come of fighting-blood on my mother's side, you know; I think I could be savage on occasion. But I am tender, more and more tender as I come into my fulness of manhood. I don't like to strike a man, (laugh, if you like, -I know I hit hard when I do strike,) - but what I can't stand is the sight of these poor, patient, toiling women, that never find out in this life how good they are, and never know what it is to be told they are angels while they still wear the pleas ing incumbrances of humanity. I don't know what to make of these cases.

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think that a woman is never to be a woman again, whatever she may come to as an unsexed angel,-and that she should die unloved! Why does not somebody come and carry off this noble woman, waiting here all ready to make a man happy? Philip, do you know the pathos there is in the eyes of unsought women, oppressed with the burden of an inner life unshared? I can see into them now as I could not in those earlier days. I sometimes think their pupils dilate on purpose to let my consciousness glide through them; indeed, I dread them, I come so close to the nerve of the soul itself in these momentary intimacies. You used to tell me I was a Turk, - that heart was full of pigeon-holes, with accommodations inside for a whole flock of doves. I don't know but I am still as Youngish as ever in my ways,- Brigham-Youngish, I mean; at any rate, I always want to give a little love to all the poor things that cannot have a whole man to themselves. If they would only be contented with a little!

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Here now are two girls in this school where I am teaching. One of them, Rosa M., is not more than sixteen years old, I think they say; but Nature has forced her into a tropical luxuriance of beauty, as if it were July with her, instead of May. I suppose it is all natural enough that this girl should like a young man's attention, even if he were a grave schoolmaster; but the eloquence of this young thing's look is unmistakable, and yet she does not know the language it is talking, they none of them do; and there is where a good many poor creatures of our good-for-nothing sex are mistaken. There is no danger of my being rash, but I think this girl will cost somebody his life yet. She is one of those women men make a quarrel about and fight to the death for, the old feral instinct, you know.

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Pray, don't think 1 am lost in conceit, but there is another girl here that I begin to think looks with a certain kindness on me. Her name is Elsie V., and she is the only daughter and heiress of an old family in this place. She is a portentous and mysterious creature. If I should tell you all I know and half of what I fancy about her, you would tell me to get my life insured at once. Yet she is the most painfully interesting being, so handsome! so lonely!-for she has no friends among the girls, and sits apart from them, - with black hair like the flow of a mountain-brook after a thaw, with a low-browed, scowling beauty of face, and such eyes as were never seen before, I really believe, in any human creature.

Philip, I don't know what to say about this Elsie. There is a mystery around her I have not fathomed. I have conjectures about her which I could not utter to any living soul. I dare not even hint the possibilities which have suggested themselves to me. This I will say,- that I do take the most intense interest in this young person, an interest much more like pity than love in its common sense. If what I guess at is true, of all the tragedies of existence I ever knew this is the saddest, and yet so full of meaning! Do not ask me any questions, I have said more than I meant to already; but I am involved in strange doubts and perplexities, in dangers too, very possibly, — and it is a relief just to speak ever so guardedly of them to an early and faithful friend.

Yours ever,

BERNARD.

P. S. I remember you had a copy of Fortunius Licetus "De Monstris" among your old books. Can't you lend it to me for a while? I am curious, and it will

amuse me.

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Grant that in armor firm and strong,
Whilst pealing still Life's battle-song,
And struggling, manful, 'gainst the wrong,

Thy soldier, who would fight to win
No crown of dross, no bays of sin,
May fall amidst the foremost din

Of Truth's grand conflict, blest by Thee, -
And even though Death should conquer, see
How false, how brief his victory!

DARWIN ON THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES.

[Continued.]

"I CAN entertain no doubt, after the most deliberate study and dispassionate judgment of which I am capable, that the view which most naturalists entertain, and which I formerly entertained, -namely, that each species has been in dependently created,—is erroneous. I am fully convinced that species are not immutable; but that those belonging to what are called the same genera are lineal descendants of some other and generally extinct species, in the same manner as the acknowledged varieties of any one species are the descendants of that species. Furthermore, I am convinced that Natural Selection has been the main, but not exclusive means of modification." This is the kernel of the new theory, the Darwinian creed, as recited at the close of the introduction to the remarkable book under consideration. The questions, "What will he do with it?" and "How far will he carry it?" the author answers at the close of the volume: "I cannot doubt that the theory of descent with modiñcation embraces all the members of the same class." Furthermore, "I believe that all animals have descended from at most only four or five progenitors, and plants from an equal or lesser number." Seeing that analogy as

strongly suggests a further step in the same direction, while he protests that "analogy may be a deceitful guide," yet he follows its inexorable leading to the inference that "probably all the organic beings which have ever lived on this earth have descended from some one primordial form, into which life was first breathed."*

In the first extract we have the thin end of the wedge driven a little way; in the last, the wedge is driven home.

We have already (in the preceding number) sketched some of the reasons suggestive of such a theory of derivation of species, reasons which give it plausibility, and even no small probability, as applied to our actual world and to changes occurring since the latest tertiary period. We are well pleased at this mo

*P. 484, Engl. ed. In the new American edition, (Vide Supplement, pp. 431, 432,) the principal analogies which suggest the extreme view are referred to, and the remark is

appended," But this inference is chiefly grounded on analogy, and it is immaterial whether or not it be accepted. The case is different with the members of each great class, as the Vertebrata or Articulata; for here we have in the laws of homology, embryology, etc., some distinct evidence that all have descended from a single primordial parent."

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ment to find that the conclusions we were arriving at in this respect are sustained by the very high authority and impartial judgment of Pictet, the Swiss paleontologist. In his review of Darwin's book,*

much the fairest and most admirable opposing one that has yet appeared, — he freely accepts that ensemble of natural operations which Darwin impersonates under the now familiar name of Natural Selection, allows that the exposition throughout the first chapters seems “à la fois prudent et fort," and is disposed to accept the whole argument in its foundations, that is, so far as it relates to what is now going on, or has taken place in the present geological period,-which period he carries back through the diluvial epoch to the borders of the tertiary.† Pictet accordingly admits that the theory will very well account for the origination by divergence of nearly related species, whether within the present period or in remoter geological times: a very natural view for him to take; since he appears to have reached and published, several years ago, the pregnant conclusion, that there most probably was some material connection between the closely related species of two successive faunas, and that the numerous close species, whose limits are so difficult to determine, were not all created distinct and independent. But while accepting, or ready to accept, the basis of Darwin's theory, and all its legitimate direct inferences, he rejects the ultimate conclusions, brings some weighty arguments to bear against them, and is evidently convinced that he can draw a clear line between the sound inferences, which he favors, and the unsound or unwarranted theoretical deductions, which he rejects. We hope he can.

This raises the question, Why does Darwin press his theory to these extreme conclusions? Why do all hypotheses of

*In Bibliothèque Universelle de Genève, Mars, 1860.

This we learn from his very interesting article, De la Question de l'Homme Fossile, in the same (March) number of the Bibliothèque Universelle.

derivation converge so inevitably to one ultimate point? Having already considered some of the reasons which suggest or support the theory at its outset, which may carry it as far as such sound and experienced naturalists as Pictet allow that it may be true,- perhaps as far as Darwin himself unfolds it in the introductory proposition cited at the beginning of this article, we may now inquire after the motives which impel the theorist so much farther. Here proofs, in the proper sense of the word, are not to be had. We are beyond the region of demonstration, and have only probabilities to consider. What are these probabilities? What work will this hypothesis do to establish a claim to be adopted in its completeness? Why should a theory which may plausibly enough account for the diversification of the species of each special type or genus, be expanded into a general system for the origination or successive diversification of all species, and all special types or forms, from four or five remote primordial forms, or perhaps from one? We accept the theory of gravitation because it explains all the facts we know, and bears all the tests that we can put it to. We incline to accept the nebular hypothesis, for similar reasons; not because it is proved, — thus far it is wholly incapable of proof, — but because it is a natural theoretical deduction from accepted physical laws, is thoroughly congruous with the facts, and because its assumption serves to connect and harmonize these into one probable and consistent whole. Can the derivative hypothesis be maintained and carried out into a system on similar grounds? If so, however unproved, it would appear to be a tenable hypothesis, which is all that its author ought now to claim. Such hypotheses as from the conditions of the case can neither be proved nor disproved by direct evidence or experiment are to be tested only indirectly, and therefore imperfectly, by trying their power to harmonize the known facts, and to account for what is otherwise unaccountable. So the question comes to this

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