tasio and, after him, the Benonis succeed in gaining admission into this formidable free-masonry, which, as they fondly hoped, was able to move the world.

Lorenzo's description of his own initiation as a Carbonaro seems like some scene from an opera. He had been mysteriously. warned by Fantasio to hold himself in readiness for "whenever the hour should strike." At the masked ball, on Shrove Tuesday, in the San Carlo Theatre, he was met by two black-masked dominos, one of whom whispered to him, "The hour has struck!" Taken into the street, he was blindfolded, and led, with beating heart, by winding ways, to a house where, in a large, luxuriously furnished upper chamber, in the presence only of his guides and two other dominos, whom he guessed to be Cæsar (recently admitted) and Fantasio, he was initiated into the lowest rank of the "Good Cousins," as they called each other. The brief ceremony impressed him by its calm earnestness and simplicity, since he had "expected at least a great display of symbolical forms and drawn daggers." He panted for action, dangerous service, anything to work off his excitement. Two months of weary waiting passed before the impatient brothers were told by Fantasio that they and he had received an order to assemble that night at twelve by the bridge of Carignano, armed! Armed! This was quite enough to fill them with wild visions of a revolution. They spent the day in rummaging out old weapons and buying ammunition. At ten the Benonis set out, armed like two highwaymen under their cloaks, to call for Fantasio, with whom they solemnly agreed that, in the strife they be lieved to be impending, nothing should separate them from each other.

The night, as he says, was just what conspirators would desire, pitch dark and bitterly cold. As, arm in arm, they approached the bridge (spanning a deep dry ravine, and leading to the old church of Santa Maria in Carignano), they suddenly heard the plaintive notes of an accordion. A shiver ran through him. This instrument was used by the Good Cousins to transmit signals to a distance. A mysterious man, wrapped in a cloak, bade them follow him to a square, open place, where once the palace of the Fieschi had stood. Other dim

figures might be seen; and Lorenzo, not without difficulty and secret misgivings, at last succeeded in counting some fifteen persons. "A short pause. Twelve began to strike at the church of Carignano close by. With the first stroke a tall figure, hitherto concealed in a dark corner, rose to view, like a ghost from underground, and pronounced the following words: 'Pray for the soul of of Cadiz, sentenced to death by the high Vendita for perjury and treason to the Order. Before the twelfth stroke has died away, he will have ceased to live.' The clock tolled slowly on. The echo of the last chime was still vibrating when the voice added, 'Disperse,' and each group moved off."

Disgusted at this silly stage trick by means of which the Good Cousins, like all declining institutions, were trying to bolster up their waning prestige, these new members soon lost all faith in the Carbonari; and Fantasio began to form plans afterward embodied in his "Young Italy." The next experience of Lorenzo (now studying law, while Cæsar toiled at medicine, his connection with the notary having been severed by a brain fever nearly costing him his life) was a prolonged, rather foolish, but for some time very ardent flirtation with a fair young widow, founded on an incident in Agostino Ruffini's youth.

The news of Fantasio's arrest fell upon the Benonis and their set † of young agitators like a thunderbolt. Accused of having initiated as a Carbonaro a certain man, who, it appears, had laid a trap for him, he was suddenly seized and taken to the barracks, where, as he says in his autobiographical recollections, the most literary of the carabineers introduced him to his companions

Council of the Order. This scene is evidently worked up out of a somewhat similar one recorded by Mazzini in his Recollections, where he was reprimanded and shown two cloaked figures, said to

be on their way to stab a Carbonaro who had been guilty of treason to his vows.

Vivid sketches are given of these: of Alfred, Lorenzo's most gentle, self-sacrificing friend at col

lege; of the young prince converted to liberalism;

of the too ardent Sforza, who fancied the simplest way to create a revolution was to rush out, waving

the tri-color, and shouting "Viva l'Italia!" of the

timid Vadoni, forced to become a monk, yet working secretly with the others; and of the young ar

tillery officer, Vittorio, who reminded Lorenzo of Achilles. Almost without exception, they were destined to suffer sorely for their country.

as "a new edition of Jacopo Ortis." He was imprisoned in the fortress of Savona, on the western Riviera, for several months. When at last released for lack of sufficient evidence against him, he preferred to leave Italy (as he supposed for a time only) to being compelled to retire to some small town, under the surveillance of the police. It is tragic to remember what a long life of poverty, exile, and disappointment, now lay before the gifted young man of twenty-five. While in prison, high up in a tiny room whence he could see only the sky and the blue Mediterranean, hearing only the shouts and songs of the fishermen and sailors far below, he kept up a secret correspondence, previously agreed upon, with his friends through his letters to his mother. Having thus heard of the insurrection in Poland, he amused himself by telling the governor of the fortress before the news had reached him from Genoa, so that, as he says, the old man, who held the Carbonari in horror, must certainly have believed that they were in league with the devil. At first he had no books. Then he contrived to procure a Bible, a Tacitus, and a Byron. Often, he adds, while yet "some hopes of individual life" lurked within him, he looked back, almost with regret, to his quiet cell in the fortress, in the soothing companionship of his books, of a little bird that he had tamed, his own thoughts, and that incomparable panorama of the sea and sky.

There was an end to his quiet, studious, blameless, semi-literary life under his parents' roof, to his idyllic friendship with "the two brothers," as he called the Benonis, their interminable talks, rambles, and an enjoyment in each other's companionship that fairly makes us envy these ardent enthusiasts, who, while filled with sadness for their country and fretted by countless vexations, were yet sustained by their devotion to each other and to a common cause.

The latter portion of the book, now grown far more serious, though full of interest, and never quite devoid of humor, is devoted to the history of Mazzini's founding "La Giovine Italia." From Marseilles, where he settled after a rambling tour, he forwarded instructions to his band of followers, Cæsar having assumed the leadership in his absence. Deprived of the stimulus of Fantasio's companionship, Lorenzo

says that they all felt as if they had shrunken to half of their former value. Nevertheless, they worked valiantly; and the new organization soon spread rapidly among all classes. An uprising was at last determined upon, destined to fall through before it even was begun, and followed by the inevitable results of arrests, penalties, and executions. Cæsar was imprisoned; and Lorenzo, after several narrow escapes, was compelled to go into hiding, and, not without much difficulty, accomplished his flight into France, swimming across the Var in a condition bordering on delirium, and fancying himself betrayed by every one. At Marseilles he found Fantasio, looking haggard and bowed by grief. There was reason. Cæsar, who even more than Lorenzo had been his chosen companion, had, as already mentioned, taken his own life in prison, a few days before.

The details are not given. We are simply told that "Cæsar was no more"; and the book ends here, with a few facts regarding the sad fate of their accomplices at home. It is impossible, in a brief outline, to convey an idea of its many merits, its quiet and genial humor, its perfect refinement of style and language, its complete mastery of English, and its firm yet easy hold upon both the imaginative and the realistic modes of treatment, remarkable in the first work of a foreign author, even at the ripe age that Ruffini had attained when it was begun. He had intended it as a story in a few chapters for L' Eco d'Italia, a periodical published in several languages, but was disheartened by discovering that "the maga zines only accept serials from well-known writers." With his innate diffidence, he laid the manuscript aside soon after completing the part describing the Royal College, and might never have had spirit to go on with it but for the kindly efforts of a certain Masson, whom we take to have been the now celebrated professor, who persuaded him to expand his story into a book. was forty-six when it was published. As the first work of a most mature writer, it seems to us more deserving of praise even than Du Maurier's "Peter Ibbetson," which saw the light when its author was fifty-nine. It was soon translated into French under the title of "Mémoires d'un Conspirateur Italien." An Italian version was made by

He

a friend at home, who wished to enable Signora Ruffini to enjoy her son's book.* Even the delight of witnessing his wellearned success can scarcely have given much compensation to the poor mother for what she must have suffered in seeing her young son driven early into exile. She herself, with the youngest of all, Agostino, went to Marseilles, to join Giovanni and Mazzini, in the summer of 1833, soon after the death of Jacopo. Well, indeed, would it have been for the happiness of the surviving brothers if they had abandoned politics, and severed their connection with Mazzini's unsuccessful strivings then and there! Still laboring under the delusion of being able to create a revolution, they accompanied him to a more secure refuge in Switzerland, with their mother. She returned at last to her home in Genoa; and the long, weary, and, politically speaking, fruitless exile of the future author had been begun.

Philadelphia.

URSULA TANNENFORST.

WOMAN AND RELIGION.†

BY REV. WILLIAM ROUNSEVILLE ALGER.

Man and woman equally represent human nature, but each of them represents it with a distinctive emphasis on particular phases of its whole. There is in man and woman respectively a preponderance of certain faculties or modes of activity of the universal humanity which they both represent. What, then, are the special qualities of the feminine and of the masculine revelation of

human nature? The feminine type is characterized by a greater prominence of the intuitions, the affections, and the conscience. The masculine type is distinguished by a more conspicuous development of the physical energy, the understanding, and the will. In accord

* Doctor Martini of Taggia, hearing Madame Ruffini exclaim, "Oh that I were young like you, to be able to learn English, and read my son's book!" actually made the translation, word for word, with such heroic labors over the dictionary as, he declared, cost him a gastric disorder which lasted for two years. We must add that Lorenzo's escape by swimming across the Var took place almost as it is so vividly described.

↑ Address before the Unitarian Club of California, April 26, 1897.

ance with this contrast of their leading qualities, by the common consent of all history and all literature, the life of man is most emphasized by outward enterprise and adventure, public conflict and achievement; the life of woman, by retirement, domesticity, the practice of home duties, the culture of the social arts. In all nations she has been the chief source of good manners, which are the preamble to both ethics and religion. Thus it always has been, still is, and always will be her mission to refine man, inspire him, and mould his ideal. The essence of social refinement, the most prominent mark of good manners, is a habit of deference and tact in any one toward others, each modulating himself in his relations with others by the principle of self-subordination and courtesy. This is pre-eminently the art of woman, and the basis of everything beautiful and progressive in society. Historically, as compared with each other, man is grasping and arrogant and self-assertive, while woman is yielding and modest and self-effacing. She is, accordingly, the more spontaneously amenable and responsive to the religious sentiment. For religion is the surrendering abnegation of the self-will of the creature before the will of the Creator. Religion is the worship and pursuit of perfection. It is completely expressed by Christ himself in the words, "Be ye perfect, even as your Father in heaven is perfect." Religion is the self-surrendering and redemptive transformation of the human by its voluntary conformity to the divine. And the substance of this, as explicitly declared by Christ, is that man should love God with his whole soul, and his neighbor as himself.

If religion is a sovereign love of God and man, leading human beings to strive to perfect themselves by realizing the fulfilled image of their Creator, what difference is there in the relation generally of man and woman to this common ideal? Generically, their relation to it is the same; but there is a specific difference arising from the distinction of sex embodied in them. The human identity which man and woman are sees its nature and destiny reflected and revealed in them through opposing but correspondential characteristics. Now what are these distinguishing characteristics, in the briefest statement? The general consen

sus of history and literature, supported by philosophical analysis, teaches us that the masculine type of character is dominated by conviction and ambition, a passion for power and pre-eminence: the feminine type is dominated by sentiment and affection, a desire for the fulfilment of her nature in a life of sheltered happiness, ministering to the welfare of others. They are both expressions of the divine purpose which produced them, but with an emphatic difference. As Swedenborg says in his "Conjugal Love," the deepest and richest and most fascinating work ever written on the subject of the sexes,-Woman incarnates love : : man incarnates wisdom. Wisdom invents designs, and seeks to execute them. Love creates objects to bless, and devotes itself to blessing them. If the affections of a woman are satisfied, she asks no career, but delightedly sacrifices everything else to what she loves. As a great poet wrote in immortal words,

"Man's love is of man's life a thing apart: 'Tis woman's whole existence."

Woman properly is more religious, stands nearer to God than man. It is, as a rule, incomparably easier for her to forego her own will, accept the will of another as her own, than it is for man. This is the essential meaning of the now classic expression formulated and given a world-currency by Dante and Goethe, "the eternal womanly." Whoso reads intelligently the exquisite description of Beatrice Portinari in the "Vita Nuova," and the somewhat parallel passage in the second part of Goethe's "Faust," cannot fail to see what this phrase denotes. Woman is the redemptress of man, because she sets him an example of self-detachment from egotism as the necessary condition for the reception of the vision and life of the divine. Dante sees not God; but he sees that Beatrice beholds him, and the beatific light thrown by reflection from her face upon his own irradiates and transforms him.

Religion is our co-operation with God for the realization of the purpose for which God gave us existence. He created us free selfhoods, that we might voluntarily train our wills into pure unison with his will through the moral renunciation, not of our selfhood, but of all the selfish egotisms connected

with it. In this distinctly regenerative work woman is the inspiring exemplar and guide of man. She effaces her name in marriage and assumes that of her husband. As a mother, she, with a pure heroism and a glad devotion that have no parallel elsewhere, sacrifices everything to the care and training of her children. There is no other word in the vocabulary of man so sweet, so dear, so holy, so persuasive, so commanding, as the word "mother." In thus relegating self to the background she imitates God, who, in bestowing on us all that we have, makes his gifts alone conspicuous, but always hides his hand.

A great deal is said of late about a new type of woman,— —a type repudiating the old ideal, created for her, it is said, by man, and setting up a new one of her own in its place. In this modern agitation for the rights of women there is, no doubt, much that is just and good. So far, may God speed it. But we must never lose the gentleness, the unobtrusiveness, the purity, the disinterestedness, the secret and sacred aspirations identified with that old ideal, which was no spurious artifice of her mas culine tyrant, but was and is the product of her own best genius quickened by the grace of God. It is infinitely to be deprecated that women shall learn to imitate the hard self-assertion of man. It is infinitely to be desired that men shall learn to imitate the gentle self-abnegation of woman.

With this warning qualification and safeguard I hail with hearty joy and hope that great coming forward of women into the full light and freedom of active publicity. They have long governed the world in secret behind the curtain. Let the curtain be thrown aside, and the whole truth be exposed. I will not permit myself to doubt that the result will be a great purification, and not a great corruption. That hard rule of dogmas which is the masculine type of government has been long tried. Let us now have a new and greater infusion of that persuasive rule of sentiment and affection which is the feminine type. Under the sway of this purer and higher temper I am fain to believe the most of our great evils will speedily melt away. For as our wise Emerson has said, "The influence of good women is the measure of civilization."

When everywhere in public life the affection of woman is added to the wisdom of man, it must be that a new era will dawn. Where good women go, love increases. Where love increases, vices, hypocrisies, hollow forms, diminish. Affection tolerates nothing but genuineness. Wherever the affections are concerned, all perfunctory repetitions are a deadly profanation, all mere mechanical observances an insufferable offence. No affectation can here have any religious power. A mock sun may look brilliant, but it does not make anything grow. The pure type of true womanhood incarnates the divine love among men to lead the way toward the solid concrete redemption of the world. For the inmost secret and very quintessence of love is that it desires to serve and bless its objects, not to be served and blessed by them. If the supreme problem in moral mathematics is ever solved,—namely, the squaring of the circle of consciousness and the extraction of the cube-root of self,-it will be first done, not by a man, who will then show women how to do it, but it will be originally achieved by a woman, who will then communicate the contagious secret to men.

MORNINGS AND SUNRISES.

BY REV. J. T. SUNDERLAND.

"Joy cometh in the morning."-Ps. xxx. 5. "In the morning ye shall see the glory of the Lord."-Ex. xvi. 7.

Did you ever stop really to think what a wonderful thing light is? You cannot see it, you cannot hear it, you cannot feel it (you can feel the warmth in the heat-ray from the sun; but I suppose that light as light, you cannot feel), you cannot smell or taste or weigh it. And yet without it the whole world, as you now see the world, would have no existence. The evening sun goes down, the light departs. The world disappears. If the darkness were complete, the world would wholly disappear. In a few hours the sun rises, the light comes back, the world is reborn. Every morning is such a stupendous and amazing rebirth of a world.

It is astonishing with what complacency we come to take things for granted simply because we are accustomed to them.

Phe

nomena or events which, if they were new, would overwhelm us with amazement and awe, long familiarity causes us to pass by with hardly an emotion or thought. Of all the phenomena of nature, doubtless the coming of morning after the darkness of the night is the most striking and magnificent. We do not recognize it as such simply because we have always seen it.

If a generation of men could be raised up without light, or with no more light than we have at night, and then if in mature life a morning could come to them, for the first time, with all the splendor of the mornings that we see every twenty-four hours, it would produce an impression probably more overwhelming than we can conceive. Indeed, it would be certain to overpower, bewilder, and blind them, even if their nervous system did not utterly break down under so tremendous a strain. As things are, we experience it without a shock or strain simply because we are accustomed to it, because our whole nature, physical and mental, has been built up in a world where mornings and light and day are constant phenomena. But the attempt to conceive of morning coming for the first time to men unaccustomed to anything of the kind helps us a little to realize what a stupendous and magnificent phenomena of nature it really is.

The coloring of the eastern sky in the morning is not likely to be so brilliant as that of the western sky at evening. There are, however, exceptions to this. Probably most of us have seen sunrises nearly or quite as magnificent as any sunset.

The glory of the morning lies in the freshness of everything: the sparkle of the millions of diamonds of dew that adorn grass, shrub, and tree; the songs of the birds and other voices of an awakening world; and, above all, the gradual emergence of nature out of seeming non-existence and the spread of the golden sunshine everywhere, beginning with the highest hill and mountain top, and spreading slowly down into the valleys.

It is not unfrequently the case in certain localities and at certain seasons of the year that days which are bright, and which give us brilliant sunsets, have their sunrises dimmed by mists or hidden by fogs. But, even where this is so, the mornings are