and where it is less excessive, to arrest of population. Clearly those members of a society who form the regulative parts, together with all their dependants, have to be supplied with the means of living by the parts which carry on the processes of production and distribution; and if the regulative parts go on increasing relatively to the other parts, there must eventually be reached a point at which they absorb the entire surplus, and multiplication is stopped by innutrition.

Hence, then, we may say that, in the first place, though each increment of growth is aided by an appropriate organization, yet this organization, being inappropriate to a greater mass, becomes thereafter an impediment to growth; and that, in the second place, growth is further impeded by the abstraction of materials to sustain organization which would otherwise have been available for growth.

To aid our interpretations of the special facts presently to be dealt with, we must keep in mind the foregoing general facts. They may be summed up as follows.

ble.

Co-operation is made possible by society. and makes society possiIt pre-supposes associated men, and men remain associated because of the benefits association yields them.

But there cannot be concerted actions without agencies by which actions are in some way adjusted in their times, amounts, and kinds; and the actions cannot be of various kinds without the cooperators undertaking different duties. That is to say, the co-operators must fall into some kind of organization, either voluntarily or involuntarily.

The organization which co-operation implies is of two kinds, distinct in origin and nature. The one, arising directly from the pursuit of individual ends, and indirectly conducing to social welfare, develops unconsciously and is non-coercive. The other, arising directly from the pursuit of social ends, and indirectly conducing to individual welfare, develops consciously and is coercive.

While, by making co-operation possible, political organization achieves benefits, deductions from these benefits are entailed by such organization. Maintenance of it is costly; and the cost may become a greater evil than the evils escaped. It necessarily imposes restraints; and these restraints may become so extreme that anarchy, with all its miseries, is preferable.

Organization as it becomes established is an obstacle to reorganization. Both by the inertia of position, and by the cohesion gradually established among them, the units of the structures formed oppose change. Self-sustentation is the primary aim of each part as of the whole; and hence parts once formed tend to continue; whether they are or are not useful. Moreover, each addition to the regulative structures, implying, other things equal, a

simultaneous deduction from the remainder of the society which is regulated, it results that while the obstacles to change are increased, the forces causing change are decreased.

Maintenance of a society's organization implies that the units forming its component structures shall severally be replaced as they die. Stability is favored if the vacancies they leave are filled without dispute by descendants; while change is favored if the vacancies are filled by those who are experimentally proved to be best fitted for them. Succession by inheritance is thus the principle of social rigidity; while succession by efficiency is the principle of social plasticity.

Though, to make co-operation possible, and therefore to facilitate social growth, there must be organization, yet the organization formed impedes further growth; since further growth implies reorganization, which the existing organization resists, and since the existing organization absorbs part of the material for growth.

So that while, at each stage, better immediate results may be achieved by completing organization, they must be at the expense of better ultimate results. These are to be achieved by carrying organization at each stage no further than is needful for the orderly carrying on of social actions.-HERBERT SPENCER, in The Fortnightly Review.

JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL, POET AND ESSAYIST.

PART II.-ESSAYIST.

MR. LOWELL says somewhere that the art of writing consists largely in knowing what to leave in the ink-pot. We may add that the art of publishing consists largely in knowing what to leave in the waste-paper basket. As an experienced editor, that is a discovery our author must have made long ago-but he has been too severe with himself. How many volumes of Lowell's prose works, if not in the waste-basket, are almost as effectually buried in magazine and newspaper columns? How many ink-pots between 1838 and 1880 have been absorbed by the blotting-paper of oblivion? A brief review of Mr. Lowell's working life will give the reader some notion of what the world has not got, and will serve to call attention to the condensed wealth contained in such unpretentious little volumes as 64 Among My Book," and "My Study Windows."

The "Lowles "from Yardley, Worcestershire, left Bristol for America about 240 years ago. There was evidently "stuff" in the family as the town of "Lowell," a shire of Middlesex, Mass., is named after them. Charles Lowell, a respected Unitarian minister at Boston, was the father of the present poet, and deter

mining that his son James Russell should have a liberal education, he sent him to Harvard University, where he entered at fifteen--became "Class poet," graduated at nineteen, and, on leaving college, was recommended to study law. Whether Mr. Lowell's faculty for promoting litigation was imperfect, or insufficiently cultivated, is of little consequence to posterity; had he been a successful lawyer, he might have become a professional politician-the world would then have probably lost a poet and a statesman. About a year seems to have satisfied him that human nature, from a legal point of view, was unproductive-perhaps dull. At all events, in 1841 he published a collection of poems called "A Year's Life." As they have never been reprinted, and we have not seen the original volumes, they may have been poetical digests of interesting cases. Some, however, have been republished; but we fail to find in the exquisite plaint of "Threnodia," "Irene," "My Love," "To Perdita, Singing," or "The Moon," the least allusion to the "Prisoner at the Bar," "Costs," or even a "Fee Simple." The mature taste which cancels early work is not always to be relied on. Why Mr. Tennyson should have only retained one exquisite line in the whole of his prize poem, Timbuctoo"- -a poem full of mature and sustained beauty-is to us as great a mystery as why Mr. Ruskin seems anxious to bury forever all his more important writings— which the world, however, will not willingly let die.

However, to fresh woods and pastures new," in company with Mr. Robert Carter, did Mr. Lowell betake himself in 1843, and the "Pioneer, a literary and critical magazine," supported by Edgar Poe, Hawthorne, Parson, Storey and others, was pioneered through three monthly numbers, when the publisher failed, and the venture was wrecked. Every one must buy his experience, and the interests of authors and publishers get a little mixed sometimes-especially those of authors-still, the great matter is to find one's "sea-legs" on the voyage of literary life. In 1844 the verses including "A Legend of Brittany," ""Prometheus," Rhocus" and some sonnets, showed at least that the poet and philanthropist was beginning to stand firm upon that quarterdeck on which the great anti-slavery battle was to be fought and

won.

In 1845 a prose volume of conversations appeared, on some old poets-Chaucer, Chapman, Ford, etc.-subsequently, we suppose, incorporated in My Study Windows"-and various hints, paragraphs, and disquisitions on politics and slavery prepare the way for some patriotic bursts of feeling, the indignation and the eloquent wrath of "The Present Crisis" (1848), "Anti-Texas," and "On the Capture of Certain Fugitive Slaves near Washington." These were shortly followed, in that most momentous year, '48, when the States were seething with revolution and Europe was in a.blaze with Louis Napoleon's exploits, by "The Vision of Sir Launfal," and the fa

mous "Biglow Papers," on which we have already so fully dwelt.* "A Fable for Critics "also appeared in the year '48.

In 1851 Mr. Lowell visited England, France and Switzerland, and lived for some time in Italy: Such essays as "Dante" show how deeply he imbibed the spirit of Italy's greatest poet, and how closely he studied the schools of Italian painting and the relics of the Roman or Græco-Roman sculpture. Of the Greek sculpture there is little enough in Italy; only a few marble replicas of a few fine statues the originals of all the finest Greek statues were in ivory or bronze. He joins in the abuse of Michael Angelo at present fashionable, and the reader may be referred to the section on “Italy, printed in the "Fireside Travels," for a variety of impressions de voyage, probably unlike what was printed before them, but very similar to what has appeared since. We miss the "flying grace" of Howell's "Venetian Life," but this Mr. Lowell would call "cheapening", one thing by another; and then, indeed, the impress left by Italy upon his mind and studies is far more important than are any of the pleasant, chatty notes made guide-book in hand. One thing is certain, that Mr. Lowell avoided traveling as other Americans are said to travel-seeing everything and looking at nothing-or, worse still, making notes, as they rush from place to place on the "Continong," of what they neither have seen nor looked at. I remember myself meeting two such enterprising travelers when I was last in Rome. They were standing opposite the "Apollo Belvidere," in the Vatican. One held guide-book with pencil, and read; the other mastered as rapidly as he could the labels on each pedestal. "Wal, what's the next?" says the friend with the guide-book. "That," says his friend, stooping down to examine the label-"that's the 'Pollo Belvidere." "Chalk 'im off," says his friend with the pencil, and both passed on without even raising their eyes to the Sun-god!

But to be at leisure, to master well, to think and write maturely, is an old-world feature retained by Mr. Lowell. It is one of his main charms; like good wine, it will keep-ay, and bear exportation to boot.

In December, 1852, he returned to America, and in 1854 and 1855 lectured on the British poets. The substance of these lectures probably reappeared in "Among My Books."

In January, 1855, on the resignation of Mr. Longfellow, Mr. Lowell, by that time famous and influential as the poet of the "Biglows," accepted the chair of modern languages and belles lettres in Harvard College.

With that passion for thoroughness which he had so humorously and forcibly expressed in the "Biglows," Mr. Lowell revisited Europe

to qualify himself especially in the French and German languages and literatures for his new post.

Folks thet worked thorough was the ones thet thriv,
But bad work follers ye ez long's ye live;
You can't git red on't-jest ez sure as sin,
It's ollers askin' to be done agin.

To this period, at Dresden, 1856, we doubtless owe those exhaustive studies, the fruits of which come out in the excellent essays on "Lessing" and "Rousseau"-papers which impress the reader, without apparent effort or design, with the feeling (most reassuring) that the writer knows so much more than he cares to say.

In 1857 to 1862 many essays, not since republished, appeared in the Atlantic Monthly, of which Mr. Lowell became editor; and in 1863 to 1872 he edited, in conjunction with Charles E. Norton, the North American Review a kind of American "Revue des Deux Mondes" in literary importance.

In 1864 appeared the pleasant "Fireside Travels," containing his gossip about "Cambridge, U. S., 30 years ago," "The Moosehead Journal," full of characteristic incidents and glimpses of out-of-theway lonely scenery and American travel in pleasant by-ways; experiences at sea, together with appearances of whales and jellyfish; a pensive paragraph on the sea-serpent, and a few words of sympathy for that rare monster's admirers; some notes on the Mediterranean, not unlike other people's notes on the Mediterranean, and "In Italy" generally-very generally.

In 1867 we have the "Second Series of Biglow" and "Melibœus Hipponax;" in 1868, "Under the Willows, and Other Poems;" in 1869, "The Cathedral," an extensive poem redolent of foreign travel, but interspersed with those delightful meditations and serious reflections without which Mr. Lowell's earnest nature is incapable of long exhaling itself in either prose or poetry. In 1870 the pith of many essays and magazine articles is extracted and issued in his three chief prose volumes, "My Study Windows," and two volumes Among my Books.' In 1872 Mr. Lowell is again in Europe, and in 1874 Cambridge University-not U. 8. A.-confers its LL.D. in the Senate-house upon one who had certainly by this time, more by the quality than by the quantity of his books, won for himself a foremost place in English literature, as well as a special throne in America, where he may well be called the Prize Poet of the Vernacular.

From the English point of view all this may seem an odd training for a politician. Indeed, our English House of Commons has always been a little shy of literary men (although it happens to have a good supply of them just now- -1880). Lord Macaulay was a fair parliamentary success as far as he went, but his extreme distaste for office perhaps betrayed a certain sense of unfitness to excel in prac