large numbers, each bearing the same iniquitous stigma, all being constantly made to feel that they and the world are at odds, is it natural that the sympathy among them in their common degradation should grow less; that the fraternity of wrong should be diminished, or that they should learn to love the power which holds them? Does unrewarding, undiscriminating, repressive and absolute slavery, upon a herding system, prepare the individual for a proper use of freedom? Is the habit of temperance in thought and action, and of regard for the rights of others, to be learned amid surroundings which are violent in their manifestations, and in which the natural rights of man are disregarded? In fine, is not experience alone the means of producing conviction upon the minds of the great majority of men? Must not the presentation of a theory be enforced by the demonstration of its truth before men will accept it, and does not the history of the world show that moral truth, which, in this case at least, means expediency, is only to be discovered and accepted as such by the demonstration of experience? Is not, then, that plan of conversion for criminals the best which will give to them a practical experience, which most of them have never had, of the ways in which men may live honestly and happily? If the exercise of true liberty be that which society wishes the criminal to learn, is it unreasonable to propose that he shall be taught the value of liberty by enforcing upon him an experience thereof? Or is a proper understanding of liberty more likely to be learned by adding to imprisonment all the incidents of slavery! Let criminals learn the value of social order by giving them interests in prison, which will demonstrate to them the value of social order. If they may earn money they will probably be no slower than other mortals in discovering that the best way of keeping money is not by encouraging theft, robbery, and social confusion. If those criminals who, for great crimes, have been given long terms of imprisonment, have the opportunity, they will not be unlikely to avail themselves of it to make the lack of total freedom as bearable as possible by increasing their worldly possessions. They, then, the greater criminals, may become the strongest converts to social order, and may use their influence for its encouragement with those whose terms of imprisonment are shorter, and who will perhaps be a part of the world into which they themselves will one day go with their accumulated property. It seems hardly too much to hope that the ranks of crime may thus be attacked from within, and the axe laid at the root of the tree. Charles Acton Ives. A Piece of History Worth Writing. If ever an author can be criticised for not making a different book from that which he professes the intention to make, Mr. Lewis Rosenthal may be suspected of having laid himself open to such a criticism in the second edition of his thorough and readable volume, "America and France," recently published by Messrs. Henry Holt & Co. He has proposed to himself to exhibit the influence which the revolt of the British colonies of America in 1776, and the popular government which they founded, exerted upon France during the remaining years of that century. His vol ume consists of a very exhaustive citation of facts and opinions drawn from the literature of that period. By stopping at this point he, unfortunately, not only fails to achieve the result at which, from the title of the book, we infer that he aimed, but he achieves exactly the opposite result. We infer that he wished to show, what undoubtedly can be shown, that France owns a large share of whatever liberalizing and popularizing influence her political institutions have experienced, since the accession of Louis XVI., to the establishment of popular sovereignty in America, and to her own part in bringing that result about. By stopping, however, as he does, at the downfall of Robespierre, Mr. Rosenthal establishes, if anything, precisely the contrary result. Balancing our accounts with France at the close of the eighteenth century, it would appear that all France got from us as the fruit of French contributions to our independence, was not popular sovereignty, not constitutional liberty, not peace, power, and prosperity, but fifteen years of Bonapartist ruffianism, terminating in a restoration of Bourbonism with seven other spirits of despotism worse than the first. What reflecting man who saw Louis XVIII. escorted through the streets of Paris by the allied armies, in 1814, if he had been compelled to judge by the events that were passed or passing, and had been forbidden to forecast the future, would not have been forced to the conclusion that, so far as France was concerned, the influence of American independence “was evil, and for evil only good!" But I take it for granted that that is not Mr. Rosenthal's theory of American influence upon France. But if it is not, his book is incomplete. To judge the influence of the political experiment made in the United States in the eighteenth century upon France, by what it developed in France within that century, would be as illogical as to measure the influence of Christianity upon the world in the fifteenth century by the accession of the Borgias to the pontifical throne, or in the sixteenth century by the incorporation of the Society of Jesus. In fact, the influence of American political operations in the eighteenth century upon France have only become palpable and well defined since the War for the Union of 1861-5. Till then, our republic was generally regarded by Europeans as an experiment which would be soon overtaken by the disasters which had in turn overtaken all the so-called republics of antiquity. The result of that struggle completely changed the opinions of thinking men of all parties upon that point, and it would be no exaggeration to say that no constitution in Europe was, at the close, what it was when the war commenced. Since then the prejudices of the privileged classes, and of the disciples of the doctrines of Divine Right and of Passive Obedience, have been constantly weakening, while the faith of the people of Europe in man's right to share in the government which he pays for with his treasure, and is expected to defend with his blood, has been constantly and rapidly strengthening. The extinction of Bonapartism and the formation of a government of the people, by the people, for the people, in France within five years after the triumph of the Constitution in the United States, in 1865, was more directly the fruit or logical consequence of American Independence than the French Revolution of '89 was; while the latter and its disastrous sequence were more directly the outcome of an inevitable reaction against despotism in church and state, the credit of which is usually ascribed to the encyclopedists or the philosophes, as it is the fashion to call them in France. Hence we say, with the highest appreciation of what Mr. Rosenthal has already done, that his work is incomplete. He has not yet achieved what the title of his book justified us in expecting of him. However, "a work well begun is half done," and this is well begun. He evidently is fond of his subject; he is not afraid of labor; and he knows how such work should be done. We therefore call upon him to prosecute his theme. Let him show how the death of Lincoln produced an emotion in France never manifested at the decease of any European sovereign. Let him show how promptly after the news of General Lee's surrender, in 1865, the French Army moved precipitately out of Mexico, deserting the "chromo" emperor it had planted there; how the blow thus given to Napoleon's prestige in France compelled him to a transaction with the opposition, and to concede to their importunities a free press and parliamentary government; how this concession compelled him, in order to divert the attention of the press and the tribune from the past and to prevent too close a scrutiny of his own title to the crown he wore, to plunge headlong into a war with the first military power in Europe, and within a twelvemonth to exchange his palace for a prison; how, during that war, the diplomatic concerns of her powerful antagonist were confided to the Minister of the United States in Paris, as the only one of the nations whose authority was sure to be respected; how, upon the downfall of the empire, a popular government was organized in France upon the Jeffersonian model, which has lasted already longer than the average governments of France for the last two hundred years, and which has to-day as good a prospect of longevity as any government in the world. With these facts, and others like them, of scarcely less critical significance which abound, Mr. Rosenthal, with his thoroughness of research, his judgment in selection, and skill in presentation, will demonstrate as he claims to have already but has not yet demonstrated, "that the people of the United States may feel justified in the belief that they have fulfilled the great law of compensation, and have amply repaid the debt of gratitude which they owed the French nation for services rendered in the War of Independence." Woodman's Portrait of John Brown.* NORTH TOPEKA, KANSAS, October 30, 1882. EDITOR CENTURY MAGAZINE. MY DEAR SIR: I have just received yours of the 24th ultimo. My portrait of John Brown was painted at the suggestion of Colonel A. G. Hawes, of San Francisco, who was with Brown in the Ossawatomie fight. Colonel Hawes told me that no good portrait of Brown existed; that the ones with the beard did not look like him, and that those without were characterless. On my way east from California, I visited the *See frontispiece. Historical Society Rooms here in search of information relating to likenesses of Brown, and the Secretary, Judge Adams, showed me the pictures of Brown in his possession; but they made no impression upon me until he finally produced from a long neglected drawer an old photograph which had been sent, among other effects of Governor Thayer, to the society from Boston. Using this as a basis upon which to build, I added to it every essential point of likeness in the others, and produced the portrait from which the photograph was taken which you now have in your possession,- aided by my memory of Brown, with whom I once held a very animated conversation in the hallway of Cooper Institute years ago, when I was not much more than a boy. Truly yours, Selden J. Woodman. KANSAS HISTORICAL SOCIETY, TOPEKA, KANSAS, October 31, 1882. EDITOR CENTURY MAGAZINE. DEAR SIR: The photograph which Mr. Woodman used as the principal basis for his portrait of John Brown was procured by the Kansas Historical Society with the collection of the materials of Kansas History made up by Dr. Thomas H. Webb, of Boston, who was the Secretary of the Kansas Emigrant Aid Company, which was organized through the action of Hon. Eli Thayer, of Worcester. That company was very influential in promoting emigration to Kansas throughout the Territorial period. Captain John Brown, Jr., when visiting the rooms of the State Historical Society three years ago, remarked to me that the photograph was an excellent likeness of his father. I saw Captain Brown in 1856, when he was shaven, and this picture is the only one of many which I have seen that recalls his features to my memory. I regard Mr. Woodman's portrait as an excellent and characteristic likeness of Captain John Brown as I saw him. F. G. Adams, Secretary. Little Tee-Hee. Somehow I can't escape a sense Of failure: though to-day her face Still keeps its tender, listening grace, Its subtile, fine intelligence (She'd look the same were I to speak In Sanskrit or Homeric Greek!) I think I'll have to give it up. Robertson Trowbridge. Bits of Midsummer Metaphysics. THESE Suggestions as to the essence of a few metaphysical units are believed to be very suitable for members of summer schools of philosophy, and for all searchers after truth. They depend for their significancy on the words themselves as related to the appreciative intuitivism of the reader: Art is the joyous externalizing of inwardness. Beauty is the joyful internalization of outwardness. Poetry is the hampered soul leaping at verity. Truth is the so-ness of the as-it-were. Right is the awful yes-ness of the over-soul meditating on the how-ness of the thing. Society is the heterogeneous, buying peace with homogeneity. A Thing is simply an is-ness. Matter is is-ness possessed of somewhat-ness. Mind is am-ness. Philosophy is the mind trying to find out its own little game. "Too Too." G. F. S. THE phrase "Too too," as an intensified adverb, is common in old literature. Witness Hamlet's "too, too solid flesh," and Dekker uses it perhaps a hundred times. But I never saw "too too" standing by itself without an adjective except in one place. That phrase, which sounds so new to us, occurs in one of the oldest English plays, "A new Enterlude called Thersytes," 1537-black-letter quarto - thus: "It is too too, mother, the pastime and good cheer, Our modern slang crops up unexpectedly in my old reading. In Dekker's Sabromastix (1603), I find "We'd let all slide." At Last. A. A. Adee. SHE tips to-and-fro in the old rocking-chair, R. K. Munkittrick. Though the mother, in words that sound imprudent, But the good Ar Chang had a tender heart. Still he couldn't think what in the world to do, And now, with the skill she had learned when she made it, She pinned on the cloak past all hope of undoing, I never can rest till it's safe in the water, Lest the mother has bribed you to rescue my daughter." Then quick in the pitiless river they threw What to Hang was Tee-Hee and to Chang was. Ting Loo. Each day, while the notable Hang U. High And pulling it downward until he drew Stretched over his forehead and fringed with lashes, In the very words it was told to me By that honest, efficient, and noble Chinee Who charged me two prices for my "washee": I dlown-ee my girl-ee in liver Kiang! He carried Tee-Hee to his own little hut, We must dlown-ee our girl-ee in liver Yang Tse,— And our mistless she give-ee much money to we!" "I will go," answered she, “and wrap Minnee Ting Loo In Tee-Hee's little mantle and bring her to you," Now it chanced Mrs. Chang had the masculine art But Chang never dreamed as he watched by the wall To peep at his master, that out of the dim W. W. Fink. |