"I DON'T like them comets. They always | exalted by seeing what he also may be and do. bring trouble; and this one means that something terrible is going to happen to this country." It was an old French-Canadian gardener who spoke. He had been a prisoner at Andersonville, and was proud of the cause for which he had fought. Two hours later a wagon drove up, and the driver said, excitedly, "The President has been shot." "There!" said the old gardener, eager and trembling, his superstition confirmed forever. We do not live-or die-to ourselves alone. The universality of the feeling is one of the striking incidents of this most critical time. The Chief Magistrate of a great nation lies wrestling with death. But amid the general and sincere grief there is no terror or foreboding. Stocks do not waver or decline. Nobody has the vague fear which followed the disasters of the war, and especially the assassination of Mr. Lincoln. The reason is that the blow is not that of one party against another, which would tend to show that we had reached the end of the republic, the bloody proscriptions of Sulla and Marius. It is the result, indeed, of an intense and malignant spirit of faction; but the cause was at once seen, and knowing the cause, the patriotic good sense of the country can deal with it. The assassin is of the President's party, but he believes that the President has wronged him and the party by his distribution of patronage. That is the bitter root which breeds faction within party, and fans the fires of party spirit to fury. The remedy lies, of course, in extirpating the root. Senator Ingalls, of Kansas, in a Commencement address at Williams College, which it was expected the President would hear, announced that the substitution of proved fitness for mere favoritism in appointment is un-American. It is painful to hear a Senator of the United States stigmatize opening the public service to every qualified citizen as un-American, because it implies that in his judgment the pres The appalled man, listening aghast to the sorrowful story, was a representative of the whole country on the Saturday morning when the attempt upon the President's life was known. At the moment of writing, he is still bravely and cheerfully fronting death, he at least undismayed, whatever may be the apprehension of others. Indeed, profound sympathy for the President and his wife is mingled with universal admiration for the manly courage with which he has borne himself throughout the prolonged doubt and struggle. Whatever the event, his name will be always mentioned by Americans with grateful pride as an illustration of those qualities which they are fond of believing to be peculiarly American, and which charm the popular heart. Like Mr. Lincoln, President Garfield is a noble representative of the true American, of those whom | Lincoln himself called the plain people. By that phrase he meant those who honestly make their own way without the aid of fortunate circumstance, and by the force of their own intelligence. This includes the great multi-ent despotism of patronage, which excludes tude of Americans. They are the people who composed the town-meetings a century ago, who, without fury or extravagance of any kind, but with the most patient endurance and persistent heroism, overthrew the king's government, and organized themselves into a nation. They had noble leaders, of course; but leaders must have something to lead. A true leader is but an advanced figure of men of his own spirit. Prescott did not win at Bunker Hill | by telling his men to withhold their fire until they saw the whites of the British eyes, but by commanding men who were capable of doing it. an immense proportion of Americans from any chance whatever of entering the public service, is peculiarly American. Before Senator Ingalls spoke, however, it had been supposed that if there is anything peculiarly American, it is fair play, or, as Jefferson said, "equal and exact justice to all men”—a justice which is absolutely denied by the system which Senator Ingalls indirectly and by implication defends. But as the President lies low, Democrats and Republicans equally share the sorrow. Indeed, the Legislature of Georgia, which is Democratic, at once declared its sympathy and horror; and in the Republican Legislature of New York the Democrats, even before the Republicans, forcibly expressed their detestation of the deed. Democrats and Republicans also agree upon the significance of the crime and upon the proper remedy. One observer says that the pistol of Guiteau has fatally wounded the spoils system. However that may be, it has imperatively drawn the attention of the country to the necessity of abating the fury of faction by obvious and practicable means. One of the most touching of the telegrams is from an exConfederate soldier, blind and disabled, who prays for the safety of the President. The old soldier knows that his former foe is not his enemy, and that a deep sense of duty acquits each old antagonist to himself. The President is now but the official executor of mild and equal laws, the representative of a common interest and a common pride and hope. Long before this Magazine is issued the result will be doubtless determined. Should it be that which all Christendom would deplore, the great consolation of the country would be the faith which Garfield himself expressed in Wall Street when Lincoln was stricken-a faith alike in the Divine goodness that controls affairs, and in the recuperative energy of American institutions. with the apostrophe to Lafayette, sitting upon the platform in the old meeting-house, which stood, we believe, where Gore Hall now stands. It is the college tradition that the audience rose in enthusiasm with the last words of the orator: "Welcome, thrice welcome, to our shores: and whithersoever throughout the limits of the continent your course shall take you, the ear that hears you shall bless you, the eye that sees you shall bear witness to you, and every tongue exclaim with heart-felt joy, Welcome, welcome, Lafayette!" and that Lafayette himself, not clearly apprehending the | drift of the peroration, and swept on by sympathy, eagerly applauded with the excited throng. Second, that 31st of August, 1837, when Ralph Waldo Emerson read the remarkable discourse to whose calm, wise, and thrill THE great Commencement event of the summer was Wendell Phillips's oration at the centennial anniversary of the venerable . B. K. ating words the hearts of men who were young Cambridge. It was also the semi-centennial of the orator's graduation at Harvard, and there was great anticipation, not only because Mr. Phillips is now in many ways the first orator of his time, but because his alma mater has not sympathized with his career. On the day before, which was Commencement-day, there was general wonder among the Harvard men of all years whether the orator would regard the amenities of the occasion, and pour out his music and his wit upon some purely literary theme, or seize his venerable mother by the hair, and gracefully twist it out within which already there are ladies seated, and a smile: "Oh, your sweet eyes, your low replies: A great enchantress you may be; The morning was beautiful, a sweet, fresh, brilliant June morning, and there was a great assembly in the grounds of the university. The usual 4. B. K. attendance is not large. The celebration occurs on the last day of prolonged college festivities, and the number of members of the society is limited; nor, in fact, has it a real existence except on the day of its oration and poem and dinner. This year, however, the centennial of Harvard, from which all the other chapters, except the parent chapter at William and Mary, have proceeded, had drawn delegations from seventeen other colleges. The pink and blue ribbon, which has replaced the square gold watch-key of other days, fluttered at every button-hole, and with pealing music leading the way, the long, long procession-a 4. B. K. procession such as even Harvard never saw before-wound under the imposing buildings toward the beautiful college hall, the Sanders Theatre. A great college day is always a feast of memory. As the music swelled and the procession moved, the air was full of visions, of forms long vanished, of voices forever silent. To the . B. K. memory in Cambridge, however, three of the society's famous days returned. First, that 26th of August, 1824, when Edward Everett delivered the oration, which closed VOL. LXIII-No. 376.-40 then still vibrate, and to which their lives have responded; and third, the day in 1836 when Oliver Wendell Holmes read his poem, "A Metrical Essay," which is the traditional Þ. B. K. poem, as Everett's and Emerson's are the traditional orations. Richard H. Dana, Jun., calls Everett's discourse the first of a kind in which there have been brilliant illustrations, the rhetorical, literary, historical, and political essay blended in one, and made captivating by every charm of oratory. But the procession has reached the theatre, in a few moments the building is filled with an audience to which any orator would be proud to speak. There is music as the audience rustles and murmurs into its place with eager expectation. Then there is a prayer. Then Mr. Choate, the president of the day, with his customary felicity and sparkling banter, speaks of the origin of the ancient and mysterious brotherhood. "And now," he says, in ending, "I introduce to you him who, whenever and wherever he speaks, is the orator of the day." Mr. Phillips rises, and buttons his frock-coat across his white waistcoat as he moves to the front of the platform. Seen from the theatre, his hair is gray, and his face looks older, but there is the same patrician air; and with the familiar tranquillity and colloquial ease he begins to speak. He spoke perhaps for two hours, perhaps for half an hour. But there was no sense of the lapse of time. His voice was somewhat less strong, but it had all the old force and the old music. He was in constant action, never vehement, never declamatory in tone, walking often to and fro, every gesture expressive, art perfectly concealing art. It was all melody and grace and magic, all wit and paradox and power. The apt quotation, the fine metaphor, the careful accumulation of intensive epithet to point an audacious and startling assertion, the pathos, the humor. But why try to describe beauty? It was consummate art, and as noble a display of high oratory as any hearer or spectator had known. It is usually thought that there must be a admirable, were perhaps made at the delight great occasion for great oratory. Burke and | ful dinner which followed the oration. PerChatham upon the floor of Parliament plead haps President Eliot promptly took up and for America against coercion; Adams and Otis threw back with eloquent energy the gage and Patrick Henry in vast popular assemblies which had been thrown in the very face of the fire the colonial heart to resist aggression; venerable mother by one of her eminent chilWebster lays the corner-stone on Bunker Hill, dren, so illustrating that ample resource and or in the Senate unmasks secession in the guise sagacious firmness which have made his adof political abstraction; Everett must have the ministration most efficient and memorable. living Lafayette by his side. But here is an Perhaps Dr. Holmes, whose felicitous genius orator without an antagonist, with no measure overflowing in wit and music has long put the to urge or oppose, whose simple theme upon sparkling bead upon the . B. K. goblet, recited a literary occasion is the public duty of the the lines whose response was the gay laughter scholar. But he touches and stirs and inspires that rang through a pelting shower of rain far every listener; and as he quietly ends his dis- over the college grounds. Perhaps as " Auld course with a stanza of Lowell's that he has Lang Syne" was sung with locked hands at quoted a hundred times, every hearer feels that the end of the dinner, if “ Auld Lang Syne” is it is a historic day, and that what he has seen ever sung at 4. B. K. dinners, there was a general and heard will be one of the traditions of Har- feeling that the day had been a red-letter day vard and of . B. K. for the university, and a white day in the recollection of all who had heard one of the most charming discourses that were ever delivered in the country, and had beheld a display of oratorical art which in this time, at least, can not be surpassed. But of all this nothing can ever be known, because the feasts of 4. B. K. are sealed with secrecy. It does not follow, because the audience was charmed, and overflowed with expressions of delight, that it therefore agreed. When an orator calls the French Revolution "the greatest, the most unmixed, the most unstained and wholly perfect blessing Europe has had in modern times, unless, perhaps, we may possibly except the Reformation," there will be those who differ-who will grant the benefi- It seems to be understood that the American cent results of revolutions, as of wild storms novel, which has been so long anxiously exof nature, but who will hesitate to call a move-pected, is gradually arriving, not, indeed, in ment of which the September days, the no- the precise form which may have been anticiyades, and the bloody fury of a brutal mob pated, but in its essential substance. Types were incidents, the most unmixed and the most of character are appearing which are plainly unstained of blessings. No American would intended to be distinctively American, and they undo emancipation, to which the life of the are the creation of genius which is peculiarly orator has been devoted. It was a great bless- intent upon character rather than upon inciing to the country and to humanity; but from dent or plot. Our first novelist, Cooper, was the blood of Lovejoy to that of the last victim distinctively American in his scenery and cirof the war on either side, it was not an un- cumstance, but not in the finer portraiture of stained and unmixed blessing. There is, in- character as moulded by a new world. deed, a sense in which "to gar kings know" tales were of the Indians and of the Revoluthat they have a joint in their necks may in tion, but he relied upon the novelty of his subitself be called an unstained political gain. ject and the interest of his plot. His two charBut since historically the lesson is taught only acters are Leatherstocking and Harvey Birch, by the terrible suffering of the innocent and and as stories of romantic adventure his novels the guilty together, it is, in fact, terribly stain- are perhaps not unworthy of the praise which ed. "Ah!" said the most benignant of men, Thackeray gave them when he called Leather"it was a delightful discourse, but preposter-stocking one of “the prize men” of fiction. ous from beginning to end." His But the word novel has come to have a disYet its central idea, that it is the duty of tinctive significance, quite different from the educated men actively to lead the progress of romance and the stirring story. It is the pictheir time, is incontestable. The orator, in- ture of character under certain artificial condeed, virtually arraigned his alma mater for ditions called society, of human nature as afmoral hesitation and timidity. But a univer- fected by traditional social usages. Defoe's sity lives in its children, and is judged by Robinson Crusoe is an immortal story of adventhem; and surely the history of civil and reli- ture, and Addison's Roger de Coverley papers a gious liberty in this country from Samuel Ad- delightful sketch of character. Sir Roger ap ams, James Otis, and Joseph Warren down to peared eight years before Robinson Crusoe, but Channing and Parker, Charles Sumner and | although it is not a connected narrative with Wendell Phillips, and the brave boys of whom a general plan, it is undoubtedly the immeMemorial Hall is the monument, all of whom diate beginning of our modern novel, the first were sous of Harvard, does not show that the sketch in the distinctively modern manner. old university has not contributed her share Richardson and Fielding, who followed, develof leadership. oped and elaborated the style. All these writSuch answers, striking and trenchant anders, Addison, Richardson, and Fielding, drew pictures of the familiar society of their time, | teristic. She certainly tramples upon the and it is this which is the characteristic of the European social conventions, and she does novel. There has been prolonged and patient what would ruin the reputation of a young waiting for the appearance of the same talent woman bred in European society. But is in this country, dealing with life and charac- there anything except the usages of that soter here as the English masters have treated ciety which are invaded? Is there anything English life and character. It is easy enough essentially unmaidenly, anything incompatible to write about Niagara and Saratoga and New- with true womanly self-respect, in her conduct? port, and to describe what is seen. But every-She is accused of vulgarity. But is there any thing in art depends upon the seer. Sir Roger breach of real decorum of conduct, and is difde Coverley was a familiar character to every ference from the European social standard to Englishman, but Addison was the first who be correctly described as vulgarity? Or-and really saw him. Tom Jones and Amelia and this is the crucial question-if ignorance and Parson Adams were common figures, but it is disregard of the rules of polite society be vulFielding alone who makes us know them. All garity, does not the typical American disreEnglishmen saw them with eyes, but Addison gard them, and, if so, is he not vulgar? If it and Fielding saw them with the imagination. be so, to draw an American accurately is to That is the difference between Shakespeare depict a vulgar person. and Settle. In this country, after Cooper had drawn the Indian fighter and told the Revolutionary story, Judge Haliburton and Seba Smith gave us the Yankee. Sam Slick and Major Jack Downing appeared. They were types of character seen withont imagination and drawn without skill; the pictures were extravaganzas and caricatures. Then came the Puritan, We are far from saying that it is so; but obviously Mr. James and Mr. Howells could not select a young man or woman radiant with charms that would delight the haughtiest aristocratic European circle, and firm in the principles which American party platforms applaud, and present them to us as distinctively American. There are, indeed, no more refined and lovely women, no more intelligent and courteous men, in the world, than Americans whom we all know, but it does not therefore follow that Daisy Miller is not a typical American girl, nor Mr. Howells's Hoskins a typical American man. If an American who is spare "Whose scarlet web our wild romancer weaves," in the most powerful work of imagination in American literature; and then the slave in Uncle Tom's Cabin, the most powerful and forcible of philanthropic appeals, which pleadedly educated, who began early to make his own with the heart of every nation in its own language. But the peculiar sphere of the novelist was yet unoccupied, and American life and character were as yet unrepresented in the way that English character and life appear in the English novel. Suddenly, however, and recently, it is perceived that the work is in hand. Yet it is evident that it may prove that the divergence from the English type has not yet resulted in another type so different as to be distinctively American. way by sharp conflict of wits and the mild morality of trade, who has early accumulated a fortune, who is generous and honest and truehearted, who feels that he is as good as anybody, and who likes to have the best of "everything going"; who is likely to use bad grammar, to say and do awkward things, to lack the grace of manner and the peculiar refinement which are found in an old society, and which are quite compatible with heartlessness and hard inhumanity and grossness-if an American of this kind is the representative of the quality of the average American character and impression, he may be what is called vulgar, but can it be denied that he is typical? The two finest observers, with the most delicately trained and skillful hands to portray what they see in this kind, are Mr. Howells and Mr. Henry James, Jun. Their works as yet are not so elaborate as the great English nov- John Bull is not an agreeable personification els, but they are widely read, and they plainly of national characteristics, and certainly he depict various aspects of a figure which is pre- does not represent the Elizabethan Englishsented as American. One of the most clearly man, nor the Stuart Cavalier, nor the Commoncut and illustrative of these is not a novel, but wealth's man; but he is recognized and current a study—Mr. James's Daisy Miller. This little because, for all that, he is still typical of the sketch was received with an admission of its Englishman. It seems to be as little questionundeniable skill, but with a good deal of pro-able that the characters which Mr. James and test against what was called its exaggeration Mr. Howells sketch are characteristically Ameror misrepresentation, and of indignation with ican. They are figures which we all immediwhat was described as the willingness of the ately recognize, not as exceptional, but as fairauthor to malign his own country-women, or, if ly representative of their class; not, indeed, driven from this point, his disposition to choose as all-comprehensive and exhaustive, as Addisagreeable instead of agreeable forms of miral Trunnion does not include Collingwood American character. But the truth is that and Nelson, but nevertheless American as Daisy Miller is neither an exaggeration nor mis- Trunnion is English. How charmingly Amerrepresentation, and the sole legitimate ques-ican is the Lady of the Aroostook. But she is tion is whether she is exceptional or charac- no more distinctively so than Daisy Miller. They both belong to what we sometimes call | ty; the Protector of the Oppressed, the Arbiter our unconventional American world. As a piece of comparative delineation of the two general European and American types, nothing is finer than the picture of Robert Acton and the Baroness Münster in Mr. James's story, The European. It is plain that in the pages of both Howells and James the American is beginning to appear as the Englishman and Frenchman figure upon those of Thackeray and Balzac, with no imitation of those or of any other masters, but with the same kind of perception, and with exquisite art of portraiture. Prin of Europe, the Terror of Tyrants and France; George, the Friend of Man, the Benefactor of Millions, is no more! Millions tremble at the Alarm. Britain expresses her Sorrow in National Groans, Europe re-echoes to the melancholy sound; the melancholy sound circulates far and wide. This remote American Continent shares in the loyal sympathy. The wide intermediate Atlantic rolls the Tide of Grief to these distant Shores. And even the recluse Sons of Nassau Hall feel the immense bereavement with all the sensibility of a filial Heart, and must mourn with their Country, with Britain, with Europe, with the World. George was our Father too. In his Reign-a Reign so an ments of human Nature-was this Foundation laid, and the College of New Jersey received its Existence. And though, like the sun, he shone in a distant sphere, we felt (most sensibly felt) His benign Influences, cherishing Science and her votaries, in this her new-born Temple." A LATE English paper says that the inherent flunkyism of English society was curiously il-spicious to Literature and all the Improvelustrated at a recent fair in London. cesses and "professional beauties" had agreed to keep stalls in fancy dresses, and the crowd which rushed to see them was so immense that it was impossible to move about, difficult to see anything, and the doors were closed to prevent a catastrophe. Nobody had any pleasure, but everybody was tired and ill-tempered, and brought away a few ridiculous things which they did not want, and for which they had paid absurdly extravagant prices. Yet the fair yielded nearly forty thousand dollars, and the paper sardonically advises the managers of "Hospital Sunday" to engage a few princesses and duchesses to hold the plates, and to be sure and advertise freely. It might be well to provide that nobody should be admitted to divine worship on that Sunday who did not agree in advance to put a guinea in the plate. But that is probably needless. Franklin emptied his pockets when he heard Whitefield's pathetic appeals; and no true Briton could refuse a guinea to a plate held by a princess or a "professional beauty." Flunkys love a lord. But we know no more amusing illustration of it than a sermon that we lately saw, preached a hundred and twenty years ago. The clerical flunky is not the most uncommon, but he is the most disagreeable of the kind. We get glimpses of him at the levées of prime ministers at the very period to which the sermon belongs. They went begging for preferment, and were ready to do what was necessary to get it. Thackeray devotes three papers of his great book to clerical suobs. He would have enjoyed the one who composed and delivered this sermon, which was in commemoration of that precious ornament of his species, to whom Thackeray himself has done justice, King George II. It is edifying to turn from Hervey's memoirs of the court of that monarch, and from Thackeray's legend for his statue, to the sermon delivered at Nassau Hall, January 14, 1761, on the Death of His Late Majesty King George II. This was the way in which the Tory pulpit worshipped the throne of earthly grace and favor a hundred and twenty years ago. But this strain is cold compared with the ecstasies of a foot-note which records the millennium foretold by one of the very first acts of George III.: "A Proclamation for the Encouragement of Piety and Virtue, and for Preventing of Vice, Profaneness, and Immorality." The preacher, forgetting that he has been depicting the lamented second George as the paragon of all excellence, breaks out, exultingly, "Virtue! Thou Heaven-born exile! Return to court!" There is nothing in the satires of this "inherent flunkyism" of English society which is so ludicrous as its sincere manifestations. All this clerical adulation was bestowed upon a man whom John Quincy Adams described as "a rude, illiterate old soldier of the wars for the Spanish succession; little versed even in the language of the nations over which he ruled; educated to the maxims and principles of the feudal law, of openly licentious life, and of moral character far from creditable; he styled himself, By the grace of God, of Great Britain, France, and Ireland, King." It is perhaps the highest praise of the ability of Sir Robert Walpole that with such a person on the throne, without the modern restraints of the prerogative, and with Jacobite intrigue seething upon every side, he gave the direction to England which she has never lost. Loyalty, in its Tory interpretation, is merely the flunkyism which was displayed in the rush and crush to see princesses and "professional beauties" at a fair. It holds that the acts and words and character of a person upon a throne are not to be judged by their essential quality, but by the conventional position of the person; and Bagehot points out that there is a very general belief among the more ignorant English people that the monarch is |