force. Jesus Christ alone founded his empire upon love, and

at this hour millions of 1nen would die for him.
‘ In every other existence but that of Christ, how many im-
perfections! \Vl1ere is the character which has not yielded,
vanquished by obstacles? Where is the individual who has
never been governed by circumstances or places, who has never
succumbed to the influence of the times, who has never com-
pounded with any customs or passions? From the first day to
the last he is the same, always the same-majestic and simple,
innnitely firm and infinitely gentle. . . . .
‘ What a proof of the divinity of Christ! \Vith an empire
so absolute he has but one single end, the spiritual melioration
of individuals, the purity of conscience, the union to that
which is true, the holiness of the soul. Christ speaks, and at
once generations become his by stricter, closer ties than those
of blood-by the most sacred, by the most indissoluble of all
unions. He lights up the flame of a love which consumes self-
love, which prevails over every other love. The founders of
other religions never conceived of this mystical love, which is
the essence of Christianity, and is beautifully called charity.
In every attempt to effect this thing, namely, to make himself
believed, man deeply feels his own impotence. So that Christ’s
greatest miracle, undoubtedly, is the reign of charity. . . .
‘ Now that I am at St. Helena-now that I am alone, chained
to this rock, who fights and wins empires for me? Who are the
courtiers of my misfortunes? Who makes elforts for me in
Europe? Where are my friends? Yes, two or three, whom
your fidelity immortalizes-you share, you console my exile. . .
‘ Such is the fate of great men ! So it was with Caesar and
Alexander. And I, too, am forgotten. And the name of a
conqueror and an emperor is a college theme! Our exploits
are tasks given to pupils by their tutor, who sit in judgment
upon us, awarding us censure or praise. . . . Behold the
destiny, near at hand, of him who has been called the great
Napoleon. What an abyss between my deep misery and the
eternal reign of Christ, who is proclaimed, loved, adored, and
which is extending over all the earth. Is this to die? Is it not
rather to live? The death of Christ! It is the death of God.’
In reply to the argument of General Bertrand, to prove that

li

Christ was merely a man, Napoleon said: 'I know men, and I tell you that Jesus Christ is not a man. Superficial minds see a resemblance between Christ and the founders of empires and the gods of other religions. That resemblance does not exist. There is between Christianity and whatever other religion the distance of infinity.'

Such, during his imprisonment at St. Helena, were the medi; tations which the reading of the great Napoleon suggested to his wonderful mind. They remind one of the celebrated confession of Rousseau, which, as everybody knows, ends with the memorable words,' Socrates died like a philosopher, but Jesus Christ like a god.' The author of that confession—the most impassioned genius of the eighteenth century, as Napoleon was of the nineteenth—labors for words in which to express his unuttered and unutterable conceptions of the superhuman character of Christ. But, after all, he adds,1 I cannot believe.' Now, why could neither a Kousseau nor a Kenan believe in Him whose ineffable glory seems to have so completely captivated their imaginations and cast so .powerful a spell over their genius? The secret of their unbelief is laid bare, and its philosophy explained, by the words of Jesus: 'He that is of God heareth God's word: ye therefore hear them not, because ye are not of God." 1 My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follou) me) 1 But ye can not believe, because ye are not of my sheep.' 'If God were your Father, ye would love me; for I proceeded forth and came from God." 'Ye are from beneath, I am from above; ye are of this world, I am not of this world. I said therefore unto you, that ye shall die in your sins; for if ye believe not that I am he, ye shall die in your sins." 'Ye have not his word abiding in you: for whom he hath sent, him ye believe not. ... I receive not honor from men. But I know you, that ye have not the love of God in you. I am come in my Father's name, and ye receive me not: if another shall come in his own name, him ye will receive. How can ye believe, which receive honor one of another, and seek not the honor that cometh from God only V'J

1 John viii. 47. 2 Ibid x. 20, 27. 3 Ibid viii. 42.

4 Ibid. viii. 23, 24. 5 Ibid. v. 88-44.

Art. II.—1. A Glossary of Words and Phrases usually regarded as peculiar to the United States. By John Russell Bartlett. 2d Edition. Boston. 1859.

2. An American Dictionary of the English Language. By Noah Webster, LL.D. Springfield, Mass. 1855.

3. A Collection of College Words and Customs. By B. H. Hall. Cambridge. 1856.

4. The English Language in its Elements and Forms. By Wm. C. Fowler. New York. 1855.

5. Language and the Study of Language. By William Dwight Whitney. New York. 1867.

6. Curiosities of American Literature. By Rufus W. Griswold. New York. 1856.

7. A Diary in America. By Captain Marryatt, R. N. New York. 1839.

8. LoweWs Poems. (' The Biglow Papers.') Boston. 1858.

9. Breitmann's Ballads. By Charles G. Leland. Philadelphia. 1869.

10. Leaves of Grass. By Walt Whitman. Brooklyn. 1856.

11. A Cyclopaedia of American Literature. By Evart A. and George L. Duyckhinck. New York. 1856.

In a previous article it has been shown that we have been false, in many particulars, to our birthright in the hearty English speech; that, so far as we have gone aside from the accepted standard of that speech, we have gone astray—gone contrary to good uisage, to propriety, to the genius itself of the English tongue. It remains to trace the causes of this deterioration in our language, and we must seek them, as has already been shown, in ourselves. If we were not deteriorated our language would not be so.

The leading causes which, in our judgment, have wrought this evil, have been our national ignorance, acted upon and intensified by our national vanity. It is not worth while to mince matters, nor to hide our heads like ostriches, nor to pretend to be unconscious of what all the world knows and sneers at. Education is unquestionably more widely diffused in this country than in any other; but then, education here is more than proportionately diluted. Everybody has a feeble smattering of culture; but there are fewer persons who have more than a smattering than in any other civilized region of the globe. When it comes to high culture, where is the class, in any of our communities, which may be honestly said to possess it? Are our politicians a cultivated class? Are our divines? Our members of the learned professions? Nay, are our educators themselves, our college professors, our makers of books, and inventors of systems, fortified for their tasks, we do not say with a culture equal to that of the first men of Europe, but with a cultivation sufficient even to enable them to comprehend the form itself of the problem they have undertaken to solve? This condition of defective culture need not to have been, for in our colonial and revolutionary periods we had a class of divines, statesmen, and schoolmasters—a large class in proportion to our scanty population—that were admirably instructed, and fully competent to transmit their gifts and influences to their successors. Nor would they have failed to do so but for the disastrous influences brought to bear upon our affairs by our inordinate national vanity, our crazy ambition to be peculiar and notorious at all hazards, and our proclivity to make the leveling instinct of democracy the one single law of social culture as well as of political life. Under these influences we cut ourselves adrift from the lessons and fruits of experience elsewhere; we grew not only impatient of study and control, but came to scorn all but short-cuts, and we fancied the slightest thing we did at our ease to be better than the best products of the most zealous labor of all others. 'If the blind lead the blind, shall not both fall in the ditch?' Blind vanity conducting oft' blind ignorance upon a devil's dance through all the limbos of undigested folly, whither would such a march tend but one way? Because we had stumbled upon new political forms outside the region of experience, we must set ourselves to invent new social forms, contrary to experience, to feign new modes of thought and new conditions of manners; and thus, in spite of us, we have had new linguistic forms to grow up within us, like those parasites which seem to spring spontaneously into life as soon as an organization gets to be unhealthy.

The effect of those things is painfully perceptible throughout the entire range of our culture. 'Our literature,' as Professor Lowell has well said, 'has no centre; or, if it have, it is like that of the sphere of Hermes. It is divided into many systems, each revolving round its several suns, and often presenting to the rest only the faint glimmer of a milk-and-water way.' But this literature is not only clique-ridden and acephalous, it is almost entirely without the instinct of art. Its most disagreeable trait to highly cultivated students is its bad taste. Our national taste is worse than none at all, for it seems to be an inhere^ly vicious taste. We incline to the tawdry in style, to the violent in manner; we admire a profusion of commonplace ornament, not the natural growth of a subject, but stuck on as inconsequently as a lady's pannier, and we cultivate a diffuseness and verbosity which cannot be consorted with strength. We commit these faults, it would seem, not so much from lack of models of a better sort, but because our taste inclines us to 'fine writing,' to the 'spread-eagle' style, to a preference for extravagance over beauty. This is a right parvenu tendency, and, sooth to say, we have a general admiration for parvenu things. Our ear is a bad one, and we cultivate it to choose discords and clash, rather than to seek what is harmonious and in keeping. What Walter Scott said of us socially is measurably trueof our letters likewise: ' They are a people possessed of very considerable energy, quickened and brought into eager action by an honorable love of their country and pride in their institutions; but they are as yet rude in their ideas of social intercourse, and totally ignorant, speaking generally, of the art of good breeding, which consists chiefly in a postponement of one's own petty wishes and comforts *o those of others." The consequence is that the great 1 Letter to Miss Edgcworth, in Lockhart's Life.