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only one I sometimes have savage doubts | antipathy for Emerson's style, and most
about is the red squirrel. I think he Emersonians detest Carlyle.
oölogizes. I know he eats cherries. The key of Mr. Lowell's view of Car-
and that he gnaws off the small end of lyle is to be found, of course, in Carlyle's
pears to get at the seeds. He steals the devotion, and Mr. Lowell's aversion, to
corn from under the noses of my poultry. the majesty of physical force. Carlyle is
But what would you have? He will come the despot, Mr. Lowell the republican,
down upon the limb of the tree I am lying and from his hostile camp he examines
under till he is within a yard of me. the peculiarities of the Sturm und Drang
Can I sign his death-warrant who has school, and separates between the early
tolerated me about his grounds so long? and the late Carlyle with a firmness of
Not I. Let them steal, and welcome. I touch and a plainness of speech which
am sure I should, had I had the same we in England are still afraid to use
bringing up and the same temptation. towards the venerable sage of Chelsea.
As for the birds, I do not believe there is "In the earlier part of his literary ca-
one of them but does more good than reer Mr. Carlyle was the denouncer of
harm; and of how many featherless bi- sham, the preacher-up of sincerity, man-
peds can this be said?" "Elia" himself liness, and of a living faith. He had
never beat this in delicacy. "Winter" intense convictions, and he made disci-
is conceived in a similar spirit. "Mil-ples. If not a profound thinker, he felt
ton," a recreative review of Professor profoundly." He is represented as a man
Masson's ponderous and irrelevant per- who hoped great things of humanity;
formance, reminds us a little of Macau- then, later on, grew impatient when dis-
lay's famous gibbeting of poor Montgom- appointed, and ended by hoping nothing
ery, the poet; and indeed this baiting of of human nature except what could be
a would-be humorist by Lowell, a real got out of it by incessant driving and
one, is very pleasant sport, and readable thrashing. "His latest theory of divine
withal. Dryden and "Dante are government seems to be the cudgel."
careful and elaborate studies of the age He is the "volunteer laureate of the rod."
as well as of the men; but it is easy to The world for him "is created and di-
see that Mr. Lowell's heart is as much in rected by a divine Dr. Busby." It would
Dante as it is out of Dryden. "Keats
be difficult for Mr. Carlyle's admirers to
is an affectionate tribute. Mr. Lowell rebut this charge, but some of them might
finds very little new to say about Words- point to the obvious fact that the divine
worth or Spenser, but his "Chaucer" is government, as we see it to be, has this
very careful and sympathetic. The essay severe, compulsory, and inexorable side
on witchcraft is, oddly enough, the least to it. It is the government of the rod,
interesting to us - perhaps because it though not of the rod only. Men are
is evidently the least congenial to the compelled and punished into the paths of
writer. The essay on Pope is as much rectitude and virtue by what we call the
under-friendly as Thackeray's "Pope" is laws of nature. Our God is a divine
over-friendly.
despot, and the human despot, when good
and wise, is a reflection of at least one
side of a divine character. What Mr.
Carlyle scorns and leaves out is the pos-
sibility of that free, slow development of
the individual which is to make him a
moral agent in the great scheme - the
willing and joyful servitor of the divine
despot. Because man will not do right,
he must be compelled; that is pure Čar-
lylese. But because to do right is in
accordance with his own happiness as
well as being the will of the heavenly
despot, therefore his tender training as a
free agent to do right freely, and not the
"dumb-driven-cattle theory," should be
the special and patient care of his earthly
ruler and this, in Mr. Lowell's opinion,
of course, is a thing better done by a
republican than by a monarchical or im
perial form of government.

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We regret to have no space for comment on the suggestive notice of "President Lincoln," full of personal insight and true American patriotism. But what we must call the attack on Carlyle and the panegyric on Emerson must serve to wind up our critical reflections for the present. Carlyle and Emerson are most dissimilar: alike in this only, that each has performed the same office for different types of mind in the same century; both have taught men to think for themselves. Carlyle by his analysis of the external, Emerson by his analysis of the internal world. The one deals with matter in its effect on mind, the other with mind in its effect on matter. He who is taught by Emerson is seldom found at the feet of Carlyle; and it is strange but true that the readers of Carlyle have often an

Mr. Lowell, though he weeps over the eminent men ever, as a rule, think it worth prophet of Chelsea, is generously alive to while to acquire this art? Not so long his literary greatness: "With all deduc- as 10 is considered an adequate fee for tions, Carlyle remains the profoundest the best lecture, whilst £50 or £100 is critic and the most dramatic imagination willingly given for the best song.

The

of prejudice and those pillories of public opinion which make so many sit in the world of thought like frightened criminals unable or afraid to stir. When I was at college I exchanged four handsome volumes of Montaigne for one volume of Emerson's essays. I have never regretted my bargain; and when I open my well-worn copy, I still find the pantheon and the forest primeval alike instinct with the great Oversoul, and vocal with the music of God.

of modern times.” And again: "As a old country is far behind the new in its purifier of the sources whence our intel- estimation of high-class scientific and lectual inspiration is drawn, his influence literary merit. Platform lecturing is an has been second only to that of Words- art like any other; and England will worth - if even to his." There is some- never get good lecturers till she pays for thing much more living and personal them. Pray, what sort of fiddling can about Mr. Lowell's account of Emerson: you get for nothing? Lowell's essay on that great magician, who seems to dis- Emerson is what I hope these two pense so naturally with the definite props papers on Lowell will prove to be-a of rule and doctrine so essential to most way of referring readers to the fountainmen, because he is so inseparably wedded | head, more than an analysis of the waters to the eternal harmonies as never to feel that flow from it. Personally, like so any of them external to himself that many others, to Emerson I owe my freesweet and lofty prophet, who, with pierc-dom and emancipation from those stocks ing yet indulgent eye, above all pain, yet pitying all distress, tells us what we know, and gives us the possession of ourselves that equable temperament, that cloudless serenity whose calm is infectious, and whose deep peace puts everything into proportion; though personally Mr. Lowell prefers a temple (unlike those vast Mexican mysteries of architecture) with a door left for the god to come in, yet he knows that the root of the matter is in Emerson, who is never out of the presence of the "Oversoul," and whose one temple is the round world and the overarching heaven. To be conformable to eternal law is to be religious to be natural on the plane of a high and pure nature to be radiant with the original righteousness which draws the love and reverence of humankind and makes life adorable, instead of forever struggling with the nightmare of original sin. This, if anything, is to be prophetic. This, in spite of what Emerson calls "the dear old devil," is the witness to the world that "God has breathed into man's nostrils the breath of life, and man has become a living soul." "What an antiseptic is a pure life!" exclaims one who has watched and reverenced Emerson from boyhood. "At sixty-five, he had that privilege of soul which abolishes the calendar, and presents him to us always the unwonted contemporary of his own prime;

we

who have known him so long, wonder at the tenacity with which he maintains himself in the outposts of youth." The brief essay before us is little more than a warm tribute to Mr. Emerson as a lecturer. We are told that he is still an unfailing "draw" in America, but we are told something else that he is a consummate master of the lecture-art. Will our

I think I can do no better than close this brief estimate of James Russell Lowell

his literary performance, together with such flashes of personality as leap forth spontaneously from its many-sided facets - with these words of his great friend and master, words fitly applicable to the few men who have measured their own time with temperate eyes, the few workers who have made their own country better and greater, "the few souls that have made our souls wiser: ""The world is his who can see through its pretensions.. The day is always his who works in it with serenity and great aims. The unstable estimates of men crowd to him whose mind is filled with a truth, as the heaped waves of the Atlantic follow the moon." H. R. HAWEIS.

From The Pall Mall Gazette.

ELEMENTARY EDUCATION IN GERMANY. THERE are in Berlin more than a hundred public elementary schools, of which I had permission to visit one of the largest. It consisted of two departments, one for boys and the other for girls. I may here observe that the third, or in

words of two syllables, both written and printed, to repeat some easy verses, to write their letters, large and small, and to add, subtract, and divide in figures between one and twenty. The Germans often teach reading and writing together, and have special lessons to instruct the younger children how to speak their mother tongue clearly, deliberately, and with proper accent: the same lessons are adapted to increase the children's vocabulary, and make it easier to learn to read. The children in the highest class were between the ages of thirteen and fourteen. This class begins work at seven o'clock in the morning, and continues, with a short interval, until twelve o'clock; in the afternoon it meets for two hours on three days in the week, while on the other three days their work is over at noon. The first hour is devoted to relig

fants' department, happily now common | Germany. Those which I saw had been in England, has no place as a public insti- only half a year in the school; yet they tution in Berlin. The authorities believe had learned in that time to read simple that, until it is six years old, a child should be trained at home and not at school, and that its earliest teaching should proceed from its mother, and not from a schoolmistress who is a stranger to it. The two departments were very large, each consisting of about one thousand children. An Englishman is somewhat surprised to find that both the girls' school and the boys' are alike conducted by a master, and that even in the girls' school only half the teachers are female. In an English elementary school there is generally one large room in which the bulk of the scholars are collected, and several classes receive instruction at the same time-not without some confusion. It is the employment of pupil teachers which renders this necessary, for if children are to teach children both the teachers and the class need continual supervision. The practice in Berlin is to place ious instruction. I heard a lesson on each class in a separate class-room under "prayer," in which, as in all other suba separate teacher. In the school which jects, the answers were long and intelliI visited there were twenty class-rooms, gent. The next lesson was one which and the average number of scholars in would correspond to a reading lesson each was fifty-four. Thus I found the with us, but it is much more comprehenplan of the building very simple. It con- sive. The scholars could read, not only sisted of four stories, on each of which with expression, but with taste as well; there were five or six rooms arranged on and besides this they had some acquainteither side of a central passage, and all ance with German literature. For inwell warmed, ventilated, and lighted. As stance, in answer to the question, "Who to light, one side of each room was pro- knows a ballad of Schiller?" every hand vided with three large French windows, was held up. The boy who repeated one and the three other sides were unlighted. was further able to say what a ballad is, The desks were always so arranged that who were the chief ballad-writers, the the light fell from the left hand of the names of Schiller's most famous ballads, children, and so that neither teacher nor and even the different periods into which scholar sat facing the light. So much that poet's literary life may be divided. injury to the eyesight has been caused by The class was also well up in the parsing children sitting opposite to the light that and analysis of sentences. The instruc the German code, short and general as it tion in geography and arithmetic does is, makes special provision for the protec- not greatly differ from that now usual in tion of the eyes of the scholars. Venti- our own country. Geographical facts are lation is effected by a valve near the of course taught in connection with ceiling, which opens into a common shaft. maps, and not learned by heart from a A jet of gas at the bottom of the shaft book. In arithmetic more stress is percauses the heated air in it to ascend and haps laid on mental calculation than with thus suck out, so to say, the foul air from us. Every new rule is first taught menall the rooms in connection with it. For tally, and then, as the figures grow too brevity's sake I will describe the attain- cumbrous for head reckoning, paper is ments of the highest and lowest classes, resorted to. In geometry, on the other merely remarking that the good results hand, the instruction is altogether beyond in the former are obtained by a very the sphere of any elementary school in judicious gradation of the work in the this country, and one might look some intervening classes. The children in the way up a secondary school without being lowest class were between six and seven able to match it. I next heard a lesson years old, the age at which attendance at in botany. The lesson was illustrated by school becomes compulsory throughout a specimen of Malva sylvestris. This

plant was chosen as representative of the one of them. There are three other natural order Malvacea, which order re- subjects not universally attempted in Enceives special attention because of its in- gland, but well taught in Berlin-(1) dustrial importance, the cotton-plant being Singing taught from notes, except in the included in it. The class knew or learned two lower classes; (2) Drawing; and (3) the following: the difference between Gymnastics. A large covered gymnasium monocotyledons and dicotyledons; the stood in one corner of the playground, in characteristic features of the natural or which exercises are prescribed for the der Malvacea; the chief flowers included girls as well as for the boys. The organin it, both foreign and native, and the ization of the girls' department was expopular names of the latter; their uses in actly the same as that of the boys', and industry; the parts of the plant, espe- the course of instruction varied but very cially the floral envelopes, and the rela- little. In arithmetic there was no abatetions between the natural and the Lin-ment, and in mental calculation the girls næan classification. I heard also a lesson | seemed a little quicker than the boys. on mineralogy. The subject was "ar- Instead of geometry, however, the girls senic." The teacher had a box of min- were instructed in needlework. This erals for illustration. He pointed out the classes into which minerals were divided, and the three forms in which arsenic is found in combination with other minerals. The boys came to the box and picked out specimens of each. There followed an account of the uses and abuses of the mineral. In the same way physics, chemistry, and physiology are taught, the object of all this kind of instruction being essentially practical—that is, to give the children a general knowledge of the most interesting facts related to these sciences, and not a special acquaintance with any

subject is not taught in the lowest classes, and the girls are between eight and nine before they begin it; hence the results are not equal to the best schools in England. I observed that the art of "cutting out" was very scientifically taught by means of a blackboard ruled in squares, each one square centimetre. I was somewhat surprised to find that the important subject of domestic economy was entirely neglected, and that very little has been yet done to encourage thrift by the establishment of school savings-banks.

MOSAICS. -The first authentic account to the baths of Caracalla; but very fine speci be found of any mosaic work in ancient Rome mens have been found in this country. The is given us by Pliny, who says that Sylla sectile or sliced work was formed, some say, of caused some "stone-laid" work to be made; the different slices of marble of which figures and from his and other sources of evidence we and ornaments were made; others hold that are justified in assuming the time of its intro- these slices were never employed to imitate duction here to have been about eighty years figues or any actual subject, but produced their B.C. This date corresponds with the destruc- effect solely through the shape, color, and vein tion of Corinth, when precious objects of all of the marbles which were contrasted. It is kinds were carried to Rome, and naturally believed that no piece or fragment of ancient created a wish in the minds of wealthy Ro- sectile work imitating a subject of any kind mans to possess mosaics as well as other luxu- has yet been found; and if it had been so em. rious embellishments. A very learned Italian ployed we must,have had examples at Pompeii, writer has divided Roman mosaics into four where the student may find all varieties of classes, namely tessellated and sectile, ap-mosaic pavement known to either Greek or plied to pavements generally; fictile and vermiculated or pictorial, applied to walls and vaults. Of these the tessellated is probably the most ancient, and consisted of small cubes of marble, seldom averaging more than threequarters of an inch square, worked by hand into such geometrical figures as, when combined, would best compose a larger figure equally geometrical, but of course more intricate. It is probable that the first colors used were black and white. The best samples of this tessellated work occur at Pompeii and at

Roman. The most noble specimen of sectile work now extant is the splendid pavement of the Pantheon at Rome, where the principal marbles are arranged, each of great superficial extent, in alternate round and square slabs. The building of the Pantheon was finished about thirty years before the Christian era. This kind of work required the employment of costly marbles, and no remains of it have been discovered in any other country than in Italy. Pottery Gazette.

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