public. We consume a periodical literature twice as great as that of England and France. Nowhere have such vast and complete educational systems been so rapidly perfected. By their influence the circle of knowledge unceasingly expands. The rural districts assimilate to the towns, and the provinces to the capital. Nowhere are individuals so insignificant. Nowhere are men so nearly alike, nowhere is competition so intense, nowhere is it so difficult for any one person to walk quick and cleave a way through the dense throng which presses him. Nowhere are fixed distinctions so improbable. The new are constantly springing up, the old are constantly falling away. Those who went before are soon forgotten; those who will come after, who can tell? Real superiorities are coveted and respected, but it is also easily seen that the greatest men have their limitations; and the humblest may follow in the track which the grandest levels for his coach. 1 With the decrease of drudgery, and the increase of leisure, habits become more contemplative, feeling more refined, and mind widens its empire in all directions. A most notable fact of the period is the art movement. The marked devotion to the art-galleries of the Centennial Exhibition, the multiplication of art-schools, reveal a taste for the beautiful from which time and opportunity will reap grand harvests of achievement and appreciation. Humanitarian advance, everywhere, is seen in the helpful treatment of criminals and unfortunates; in prison reforms, in the tender care of the insane, in the efforts to mitigate the horrors of war, in the mitigation of the penal code, in the foundation of societies for the prevention of cruelty to animals, in the abolition of slavery, in the growing disposition to live, not for self merely, but for some form of the eternal good. This is the last and best hope of civilization. Religion. In looking at the nineteenth century, we are struck with one commanding characteristic,- the tendency in all its movements to expansion, to diffusion, to universality. It is more and more understood that religious truth is every man's property and right; that it is committed to no order or individual, to no priest or sage, to be given or withheld. The historical questions, once so much disputed between Anglican and Puritan, are less and less controverted by scholars on either side. Few castle, and whose masters play therein, under new forms, the part of the mediaval baron. This enormous concentration of land, coupled with the cruelties of the Tudor conquest, explains the deplorable evils of sea-girt Ireland, and her deathless hatred of the conquerors. The American is the continuation of English genius into new conditions, more or less propitious. There is the same practical common-sense, a similar, but more general, love of physical wellbeing. Under a feudal system, the poor get as much accustomed to their poverty, as the rich to their opulence. Here, on the contrary, the desire of acquisition haunts the imagination of the one, and the dread of loss that of the other. All strain to pursue or to retain delights so imperfect, so fugitive. The love of material gain is the predominant taste. Hence the universal stir, the ceaseless change, the perpetual hurry, the unrest in the midst of abundance. Says Tocqueville: 'A man of the United States clings to this world's goods as if he were certain never to die; and he is so hasty in grasping at all within his reach, that one would suppose he was constantly afraid of not living long enough to enjoy them. He clutches everything, he holds nothing fast, but soon loosens his grasp to pursue fresh gratifications. . . . A man builds a house to spend his latter years in, and he sells it before the roof is on: he plants a garden, and lets it just as the trees are coming into bearing: he brings a field into tillage, and leaves other men to gather the crops: he embraces a profession, and gives it up: he settles in a place which he soon afterward leaves, to carry his changeable lodgings elsewhere. . . . Death at length overtakes him, but it is before he is weary of his bootless chase of that complete felicity which is forever on the wing.' It is this restlessness, united to love of freedom and attention to public affairs, that creates prosperity. The world affords no similar example of rapid development. Our territory touches two oceans a thousand leagues apart, stretching through all the productive degrees of latitude. Our surplus products amounted in 1860 to sixty million sterling; in 1878 to one hundred and forty million. We can supply wheat enough to feed the world, cotton enough to clothe it, coal enough to warm it, oil enough to light it. We have almost as many miles of railroad, and as many miles of telegraph, as the rest of the globe. Our mines of gold and silver, of copper and iron, are practically inexhaustible. In ten thousand ways machinery has lifted the burden from labor, and multiplied the comforts of life. But our progress consists not in material things alone. Mental equality is the basis of popular sovereignty. The free school spreads republican principles, and creates the reading public. We consume a periodical literature twice as great as that of England and France. Nowhere have such vast and complete educational systems been so rapidly perfected. By their influence the circle of knowledge unceasingly expands. The rural districts assimilate to the towns, and the provinces to the capital. Nowhere are individuals so insignificant. Nowhere are men so nearly alike, nowhere is competition so intense, nowhere is it so difficult for any one person to walk quick and cleave a way through the dense throng which presses him. Nowhere are fixed distinctions so improbable. The new are constantly springing up, the old are constantly falling away. Those who went before are soon forgotten; those who will come after, who can tell? Real superiorities are coveted and respected, but it is also easily seen that the greatest men have their limitations; and the humblest may follow in the track which the grandest levels for his coach. With the decrease of drudgery, and the increase of leisure, habits become more contemplative, feeling more refined, and mind widens its empire in all directions. A most notable fact of the period is the art movement. The marked devotion to the art-galleries of the Centennial Exhibition, the multiplication of art-schools, reveal a taste for the beautiful from which time and opportunity will reap grand harvests of achievement and appreciation. Humanitarian advance, everywhere, is seen in the helpful treatment of criminals and unfortunates; in prison reforms, in the tender care of the insane, in the efforts to mitigate the horrors of war, in the mitigation of the penal code, in the foundation of societies for the prevention of cruelty to animals, in the abolition of slavery, in the growing disposition to live, not for self merely, but for some form of the eternal good. This is the last and best hope of civilization. Religion. In looking at the nineteenth century, we are struck with one commanding characteristic,- the tendency in all its movements to expansion, to diffusion, to universality. It is more and more understood that religious truth is every man's property and right; that it is committed to no order or individual, to no priest or sage, to be given or withheld. The historical questions, once so much disputed between Anglican and Puritan, are less and less controverted by scholars on either side. Few prayers are now so few and so cold?' The child, as it develops into youth, exchanges its repose for conflict fraught with danger; but would we forever keep it a child? But if there is a loss of enthusiasm, there is a gain of temper. Unbelief has grown gentle and respectful. Benevolence, uprightness, enterprise, and freedom are multiplying. The religious element, the sighing for the perfect, the longing for the infinite, the thirst for beauty, the hunger for righteousness, can never die. The central, saving truths of the faith will flower and fruit as long as there are days of toil and sorrow, or nights of weariness and pain. Meanwhile the effective strength of the ministry is in earnestness, in a solemn conviction that religion is a great concern; in a solemn purpose that its claims shall be felt; in acquaintance with contemporary secular thought; in ability to discern and explain the consistency of Christianity with the new lights which are breaking in from the outer world; in courage to renounce ideas that are outlived, or habits that are outlawed; in culture that is instinct with life and feeling. Poetry. The potent tidal wave which threw on shore so many treasures of the deep, has long since ebbed, and no second has arisen which approaches the level of the former. The genius of the present is less creative than elective and refining, exquisite rather than imaginative, diffusive rather than powerful. Two kinds of verse are discernible,-one which continues the impulse received from Keats and Shelley, the other from Wordsworth. The dominant tone is composite, uniting the classicism and romanticism of the first to the reflection and naturalism of the second. Richly melodied and highly colored, embracing every variety of rhythm and technical effect, it finds its chief voice in Tennyson. The conditions affecting the social order have affected the conditions bearing upon art. The most notable of these are the iconoclastic tendencies of science and the passion for material progress. Both indicate a subsidence of the forces which heaved up the mountain ranges of the Byronic age. Never, perhaps, was the poetical talent so largely diffused. Never was so much good poetry written-never so much performance above mediocrity; but poets have been supplanted in general regard, and moment. Not a name or a creed, but purity of desire and deed, Christly love of God and man,- this is the essential thing: 'Let us think of forms less, and the external. Trust the spirit, As sovran nature does, to make the form; For otherwise we only imprison spirit, And not embody. Inward evermore To outward, so in life, and so in art, So the modern typical preacher exposes and reproves public sins, applies and urges the motives to sobriety, honesty, charity; and without being entirely released from the old narrowness, broadens into a critic and cultivator of character. His grand endeavor is not so much to save men as to make them worthy. The more closely we approach the centre of our faith, the more closely we draw together. The followers of Calvin no longer burn, torture, imprison, or traduce the descendants of Servetus. When they have ceased to be good sectarians, they are merely 'suspended.' They may still be-as all believe them to begood Christians, and may find themselves, in their non-sectarian sphere, more attractive, more influential, more useful. But human affairs admit no unmixed good. That the tendencies are achieving a higher condition for the race there can be no doubt; but the simplicity and fervor of the elder time seem to have passed away before the self-assertion of liberty, the levelling of democracy, the distrust of cupidity, the spirit of criticism, the decline of imagination, the discovery of unchanging law. There is much preaching for lucre or display; much attendance from usage, for propriety's sake, or from a vague notion of salvation. There is a disposition to look at religion, instead of living in it; to own it as a noble fact, as if it were a fair creation of the soul, instead of a divine reality; to discuss with the lips each other's doctrines, instead of going into silence with their own God. In particular, we mourn the decay of reverence, that most beautiful of all forms of moral goodness; that character of humility and of awe, so dependent, so earnest, so devout, which, Ixion-like, bestowed its affections upon a cloud, and made its illusions the source of purest virtues. Why is it,' said Luther's wife, looking sadly back upon the sensuous creed which she had left, that in our old faith we prayed so often and so warmly, and that our |