longer like itself? When revenge and pride borrow the force of conscience, it is true that they acquire new corrosive power. But as unreasons are not produced by reason itself, so neither are false moralities produced by conscience, nor barbarous imaginations of God and truth by the imaginary soul.

The more, indeed, the spiritual powers are left to their own untrammelled action, and the more man can clear the field for them, and surrender himself to them, the more perfect will be their outcome, the more manifest, therefore, the universality of their nature. Just contrary to this, the more the senses have the field to themselves, and the less their action is interpenetrated and commanded by reason, the more illusory and untrustworthy becomes their product. And herein is the final and crowning proof of the position taken; namely, that the soul is rightfully sovereign and infinitely to be trusted, the senses rightfully servile and perfectly to be subordinated. Leave the soul to take the throne and act with undisputed authority, and you have celestial unity, order, beauty; leave the senses to usurp sovereignty, and you have a dance of apes. Is it doubtful, therefore, to whose hand the sceptre belongs?

Great force is added to this argument by the broad, obvious facts of human history. The believing thoughts and imaginations of mankind—just those which the senses deny and materialism mocks at have been the life-blood of all great poetry and philosophy, the atmosphere of genius, the inspiration of art, the sky that has overarched every grand and fruitful polity, the quickening and support of socialization, the most radical and the most conserving of principles. Every greatest epoch in history has been an epoch in belief, and faiths have been commanding as they have been high and spiritual; while, on the other hand, every materialistic civilization is a civilization in decay. Strike out of history all which spiritual imagination and believing reason have put in, and what remains will be of less interest than the history of Hottentots. It would be like taking the brain-force out of man's body. The body of man has many very noble organs not included in his nervous system, organs for digestion, for sanguineous circulation, for locomotion; but every one of these organs, in its highly developed form, is connected with his nervous sys

tem, implying its existence; so that were this system by some fiat of nature degraded to the level it has in molluscous animals, a total degradation, and of like extent, must follow. So there is a vast deal of good and valuable in human history, which is not referable directly to high spiritual powers, as commerce, industry, much of industrial invention and scientific discovery; yet without the high faiths of man, there had never been his material civilization. The sovereign action of the soul is really implied in cities and cotton-mills and the broad peace of industry, no less than in worships; and could you abolish all celestial imagining, all spiritual persuasion, history would instantly go down to a mollusk level, and immerse itself in mud. Congresses may sneer when asked to base legislation on moral truth; yet but for faith in moral truth, no congress had been there. Judges may turn justice out of court; but it was, nevertheless, the religious consecration of justice that gave them a function to profane. Commerce may buy fagots to burn seer and saint; yet could it burn believing insight and sanctity out of the world, it would consume mint and argosy in the self-same flame. It is by the virtue and in the right of the soul, that civilization itself exists, that man has come forth from his caves.

Why, then, this exaggerated confidence in the senses? Chiefly because they are senses, low powers, wherein one may confide without exercise of spiritual intrepidity. Man is born a perfect animal, he is born a rudimentary soul; and in the measure of his indolence and timidity he has a predilection for powers in which he is already complete, rather than for those in which he is yet to be completed. The babe creeps easily, walks with difficulty, therefore may prefer to creep. Only after much luring from the old ospreys do the young ones launch away from the nest; sometimes they must even be driven out with blows.

In the measure, too, that any man is an egotist, he will avoid confessing to himself any weakness or unripeness. He therefore will, so far, be not only averse to the exercise of incomplete powers, but averse also to their recognition. He will enumerate in the inventory of his possessions only those faculties wherein he displays to advantage, that he may flatter VOL. LXXIV. - 5TH S. VOL. XII. NO. III.

34

and cocker himself with the sense of an existence already rounded, ripened, worthy of admiration. You shall easily find a man who, if he shoot well and swim ill, will declare swimming a base and useless art, and will never view himself, especially will never compare himself with others, otherwise than in the light of a marksman. This, too, is a kind, and a very bad kind, of cowardice. The weakling is afraid of losing his self-estimation, if he do not feed it with this sense of egoistic perfection. Of this kind of cowardice the world is full, and it operates most efficiently against spirituality and the great prosperities of believing power. Men, in their desire to rest in the sense of a completed being, in their fear to find in themselves any immaturity or imperfection, shut themselves up to those powers that are lowest, littlest, and thus never come to know, far less to prosper in, those elements of their being that alone give it grandeur; and they do this because, out of fear to feel themselves little, they will not recognize those powers in which they are youngest and least developed.

In fine, contemplate the matter in what aspect one will, it equally appears that great spiritual daring must go to all high believing, a great courage of humility on the one hand, a great courage of self-trust, or soul-trust, on the other. Equally must he who nobly believes face the falsities of private and of social egotism. For the same influence which produces in individuals a tendency to rest in completed powers, produces in society a tendency to rest in completed social results, in forms, institutions, and the like. Hence a perpetual resistance to the influx of principle. Hence a horror of high, renovating belief. Hence an endeavor to make polities turn, not upon the poles of truth, but of trade. So it happens that, though justice be the only salvation of states, yet he who counsels justice first, justice last, justice midst and without end, appalls the judge on his bench, the legislator in his halls, may be the "Christian" at his worship, and seems the most dangerous of men. Justice alone is safe, yet only courage will confide in it. This is the one thing about which there is no peradventure; yet only by noble adventure may its utmost benediction be gained. So is it with every part and phase of high spirituality and humane belief.

it

Only an intrepid heart can believe greatly. Intrepid enough, first of all, it must be to face down egotism, to face down selfdeception, and come to terms of utter unsullied candor with itself, that it may really get speech of the soul, and not put in place of that the mimicries of its voice made by sensuality and selfish desire. Next, it must be brave enough to face and dispel the ghosts of superstition, namely, the phantoms bred by brute imagination, or by sin and half-conscience combined. Finally, it must be brave enough to launch away, like the young ospreys, from the nests of the senses, and trust to the support of pure principle.

What, then, is wiser than to exercise ourselves in spiritual daring? Why should we not reverse the customary canons of prudence, and adjudge this high valor to be the better part of discretion? He was a very prudent man that hid his talent in a napkin; he would not lose his lord's money, not he; he would run no risks, discreet gentleman! And his reward was, "Take the talent from him." Caution is good; but what caution? Caution that dares not be wholly rational, for fear of being irrational? Half the world thinks him only "sensible" who exhibits a chronic insensibility to the highest counsels of his being. Let one be cautious lest, in becoming half the world's wise man, he make himself the universe's fool. Let him be cautious lest his heart be not capacious and credent enough to take in and harbor well the eternal good news. Give us in these days a little spiritual knighthood. Who is he that will disdain that sort of "rationality" which consists in holding fast and fearfully to the merest apronstrings of Mother Earth? Who is he that will hear the soul's voice, and do its bidding, careless that all the deeps bellow, "Nay," if the regal "Yea" of that have once been heard? Room and reason is there for these chivalries, and will be while time lasts.

There is a noble oceanic bird, the frigate-bird (Tachypetis aquila), whose true home is in the air, one might almost say in the sky. Seldom, if ever, from weariness, seldom, if ever, for purposes of rest, does it stoop to land or sea, but, save when descending for food or at the breeding season, keeps month after month its lofty place, resting and sleeping on

expanded wing; and when the lower strata of the atmosphere are stirred by the wrath of storms, then up it goes, above their fury to poise and repose itself in cloudless calm. So in the consummate fulness of his inward force and believing courage will man rise and repose on the wings of noblest persuasion, of spiritual imagining, of faith in everlasting truth and right. Not alone with toil and effort will he soar, not alone with beaded brow and beating wing, but with the ease and unconsciousness of one to whom these airy altitudes are a natural level, now reposing in the quiet of ethereal slumber, now sweeping and circling in pure native play of his genius; and when wide about the earth clouds darken, storms bluster, and thunders break, then will his buoyant soul assert its privilege, ascending in the strength of belief above this insanity of elements, and poising its great peace in the serenity and sunshine beyond.

The Novels of JANE AUSTEN.

Pride and Prejudice. - Northanger Abbey.Mansfield Park. Sense and Sensibility. - Persuasion. - Emma. 4 vols. Boston: Ticknor and Fields. 1863.

SOCIETY owes much to the romance-writers of Miss Austen's day. They were the reformers of the novel. They raised its tone and developed its capabilities. They made it clear that purity in action and sentiment was not incompatible with excitement of plot and liveliness of dialogue; that a story might be amusing and attractive without offending correct taste or perverting good morals; that it might cultivate whilst it excited the imagination, - might instruct as well as entertain.

Among the first of these reformers was Frances Burney (Madame D'Arblay). The benefit she conferred was, however, rather negative than positive. Still the honor belongs to her of leading the way in the right path. "Evelina,” published in 1778, is unexceptionable in tone, without special refinement of manner or elevation of sentiment. This novel, which Edmund Burke and Sir Joshua Reynolds sat up all night to