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FROM NATURE TO MAN. TIME was when Nature's every mystic mood Poured round my heart a flood of eager joy; When pageantry of sunsets moved the boy More than high ventures of the great and good; When trellised shadows in the vernal wood,

And little peeping flowers, so sweet and coy, Were simple happiness without alloy, And whispered to me things I understood. But now the strange sad weight of human woe, And all the bitterness of human wrong, Press on my saddened spirit as I go,

And stir the pulsings of a graver song: Dread mysteries of life and death I scan, And all my soul is only full of man. Spectator.

W. WALSHAM BEDFORD.

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From The Nineteenth Century. A WORD MORE ABOUT AMERICA.

WHEN I was at Chicago last year, I was asked whether Lord Coleridge would not write a book about America. I ventured answer confidently for him that he would do nothing of the kind. Not at Chicago only, but almost wherever I went, I was asked whether I myself did not intend to write a book about America. For oneself one can answer yet more confidently than for one's friends, and I always replied that most assuredly I had no such intention. To write a book about America, on the strength of having made merely such a tour there as mine was, and with no fuller equipment of preparatory stud. ies and of local observations than I possess, would seem to me an impertinence.

should for my part expect to find there rather such and such other things, which I mentioned. I said that of aristocracy, as we know it here, I should expect to find, of course, in the United States the total absence; that our lower class I should expect to find absent in a great degree, while my old familiar friend, the middle class, I should expect to find in full possession of the land. And then betaking myself to those playful phrases which a little relieve, perhaps, the tedium of grave disquisitions of this sort, I said that I imagined one would just have in America our Philistines, with our aristocracy quite left out and our populace very nearly.

An acute and singularly candid American, whose name I will on no account beIt is now a long while since I read M. tray to his countrymen, read these obser de Tocqueville's famous work on democ- vations of mine, and he made a remark racy in America. I have the highest re- upon them to me which struck me a good spect for M. de Tocqueville; but my re- deal. Yes, he said, you are right, and membrance of his book is that it deals your supposition is just. In general, what too much in abstractions for my taste, and you would find over there would be the that it is written, moreover, in a style Philistines, as you call them, without your which many French writers adopt, but aristocracy and without your populace. which I find trying—a style cut into short Only this, too, I say at the same time: paragraphs and wearing an air of rigorous you would find over there something be scientific deduction without the reality. sides, something more, something which Very likely, however, I do M. de Tocque- you do not bring out, which you cannot ville injustice. My debility in high spec- know and bring out, perhaps, without actuulation is well known, and I mean to at-ally visiting the United States, but which tempt his book on democracy again when you would recognize if you saw it.

I have seen America once more, and when years may have brought to me, perhaps, more of the philosophic mind. Meanwhile, however, it will be evident how serious a matter I think it to write a worthy book about the United States, when I am not entirely satisfied with even M. de Tocqueville's.

But before I went to America, and when I had no expectation of ever going there, I published, under the title of "A Word about America," not indeed a book, but a few modest remarks on what I thought civilization in the United States might probably be like. I had before me a Boston newspaper article which said that if I ever visited America I should find there such and such things; and taking this article for my text I observed, that from all I had read and all I could judge, I

My friend was a true prophet. When I saw the United States I recognized that the general account which I had hazarded of them was, indeed, not erroneous, but that it required to have something added to supplement it. I should not like either my friends in America or my countrymen here at home to think that my "Word about America" gave my full and final thoughts respecting the people of the United States. The new and modifying impressions brought by experience I shall communicate, as I did my original expectations, with all good faith, and as simply and plainly as possible. Perhaps when I have yet again visited America, have seen the great West, and have had a second reading of M. de Tocqueville's classical work on democracy, my mind may be enlarged and my present impressions still

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further modified by new ideas. If so, I promise to make my confession duly; not indeed to make it, even then, in a book about America, but to make it in a brief "Last Word" on that great subject—a word, like its predecessors, of open-hearted and free conversation with the readers of this review.

claimers suppose, and that the merit of the Americans was not that of oppressed men rising against tyrants, but rather of sensible young people getting rid of stu. pid and overweening guardians who misunderstood and mismanaged them.

All this let us concede, if we will; but in conceding it let us not lose sight of the really important point, which is this: that I suppose I am not by nature disposed their institutions do in fact suit the people to think so much as most people do of of the United States so well, and that "institutions." The Americans think and from this suitableness they do derive so talk very much of their "institutions;" I much actual benefit. As one watches the am by nature inclined to call all this sort play of their institutions, the image sug of thing machinery, and to regard rather gests itself to one's mind of a man in a men and their characters. But the more suit of clothes which fits him to perfec I saw of America, the more I found my- tion, leaving all his movements unimpeded self led to treat "institutions" with in- and easy. It is loose where it ought to creased respect. Until I went to the be loose, and it sits close where its sitting United States I had never seen a people close is an advantage. The central gov. with institutions which seemed expressly ernment of the United States keeps in its and thoroughly suited to it. I had not own hands those functions which, if the properly appreciated the benefits proceed-nation is to have real unity, ought to be ing from this cause.

Sir Henry Maine, in an admirable essay which, though not signed, betrays him for its author by its rare and characteristic qualities of mind and style - Sir Henry Maine in the Quarterly Review adopts and often reiterates a phrase of M. Scherer, to the effect that "democracy is only a form of government." He holds up to ridicule a sentence of Mr. Bancroft's history, in which the American democracy is told that its ascent to power "proceeded as uniformly and majestically as the laws of being, and was as certain as the decrees of eternity." Let us be willing to give Sir Henry Maine his way, and to allow no magnificent claim of this kind on behalf of the American democracy. Let us treat as not more solid the assertion in the Declaration of Independence, that "all men are created equal, are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, among them life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." Let us concede that these natural rights are a figment; that chance and circumstance, as much as deliberate foresight and design, have brought the United States into their present condition, that moreover the British rule which they threw off was not the rule of oppressors and tyrants which de

kept there; those functions it takes to itself and no others. The State governments and the municipal governments provide people with the fullest liberty of managing their own affairs, and afford, besides, a constant and invaluable school of practical experience. This wonderful suit of clothes, again (to recur to our image), is found also to adapt itself naturally to the wearer's growth, and to admit of all enlargements as they succes. sively arise. I speak of the state of things since the suppression of slavery, of the state of things which meets a spectator's eye at the present time in America. There are points in which the institutions of the United States may call forth criticism. One observer may think that it would be well if the president's term of office were longer, if his ministers sate in Congress or must possess the confidence of Congress. Another observer may say that the marriage laws for the whole nation ought to be fixed by Congress, and not to vary at the will of the legislatures of the several States. I myself was much struck with the inconvenience of not allowing a man to sit in Congress except for his own district; a man like Wendell Phillips was thus excluded, because Boston would not return him. It is as if Mr. Bright could

have no other constituency open to him if | half a dozen politicians whom in England Rochdale would not send him to Parlia- we should pronounce to be members of ment. But all these are really questions Parliament of the highest class, in bearing, of machinery (to use my own term), and manners, tone of feeling, intelligence, inought not so to engage our attention as to formation. I discovered that in truth the prevent our seeing that the capital fact as practice, so common in America, of callto the institutions of the United States is ing a politician "a thief," does not mean this: their suitableness to the American so very much more than is meant in Enpeople, and their natural and easy working. gland when we have heard Lord BeaconsIf we are not to be allowed to say, with field called "a liar" and Mr. Gladstone Mr. Beecher, that this people has " a "a madman." It means, that the speaker genius for the organization of States," disagrees with the politician in question then at all events we must admit that in and dislikes him. Not that I assent, on its own organization it has enjoyed the the other hand, to the thick-and-thin Amermost signal good fortune. ican patriots, who will tell you that there is no more corruption in the politics and ad. ministration of the United States than in those of England. I believe there is more, and that the tone of both is lower there; and this from a cause on which I shall have to touch hereafter. But the corruption is exaggerated; it is not the wide and deep disease it is often represented; it is such that the good elements in the nation may, and I believe will, perfectly work it off; and even now the truth of what I have been saying as to the suitableness and successful working of American institutions is not really in the least affected by it.

Yes; what is called, in the jargon of the publicists, the political problem and the social problem, the people of the United States does appear to me to have solved, or fortune has solved it for them, with undeniable success. Against invasion and conquest from without they are impregnably strong. As to domestic concerns, the first thing to remember is, that the people over there is at bottom the same people as ourselves, a people with a strong sense. for conduct. But there is said to be great corruption among their politicians and in the public service, in municipal administration, and in the administration of justice. Sir Lepel Griffin would lead us to think that the administration of justice, in particular, is so thoroughly corrupt, that a man with a lawsuit has only to provide his lawyer with the necessary funds for bribing the officials, and he can make sure of winning his suit. The Americans themselves use such strong language in describing the corruption prevalent amongst them that they cannot be surprised if strangers believe them. For myself, I had heard and read so much to the discredit of American political life, how all the best men kept aloof from it, and those who gave themselves to it were unworthy, that I ended by supposing that the thing must actually be so, and the good Americans must be looked for elsewhere than in politics. Then I had the pleasure of dining with Mr. Bancroft in Washington; and however he may, in Sir Henry Maine's opinion, overlaud the preestablished harmony of American democracy, he had at any rate invited to meet me

Furthermore, American society is not in danger from revolution. Here, again, I do not mean that the United States are exempt from the operation of every one of the causes — such a cause as the division between rich and poor, for instance ---which may lead to revolution. But I mean that comparatively with the old countries of Europe they are free from the danger of revolution; and I believe that the good elements in them will make a way for them to escape out of what they really have of this danger also, to escape in the future as well as now the future for which some observers announce this danger as so certain and so formidable. Lord Macaulay predicted that the United States must come in time to just the same state of things which we witness in England; that the cities would fill up and the lands become occupied, and then, he said, the division between rich and poor would establish itself on the same scale as with us, and be just as embarrassing. He for