it points out. Obstructions hedge him about, penury cramps and denies him both instruments and occasions, calumny and ridicule dog him, neglect freezes or hate turns to gall his heart's ardent loves, and, with naked feet, he is constrained to tread a stony, thorny way. Even so deals the world with them commissioned of God as its prophets and teachers. No marvel, then, at the frequent perversion and sometimes deep debasement of genius. Want and fashion, and the broad, deep currents of immemorial opinion 'tis not given, save rarely, even to this to resist and overcome. Blame not, then, that you witness Heaven's own subtle flame burning on strange altars, or the temple vessels desecrated by heathen orgies.

But the social order, that necessitates things like these-is it for us to acquiesce therein, or shall we demand a reorganization?

Verily, we crave no impracticable, no irrational thing. We ask a society, wherein all God's children shall be sufficiently fed, and clad, and housed-wherein every individual shall find leisure, sphere, and means for the fit, harmonious unfolding of all his powers of body and spirit-wherein each shall have his true standing-place and environment, and may act his individual self freely and fully out-wherein the highest shall be recognized as highest, and not the lowest enact the governing and moulding powerwherein the want and anxiety and thraldom and everlasting clash, which now so torment man's life, shall no longer be, and the individual and the general weal shall be joined in indissoluble marriage. Who, on this broad earth, yearns not for such a social state? And, unless reason be a will.o'the-wisp and figures a lie, such a state is possible, and, through association, shall ere long exist!

D. H. B.

CHARLES FOURIER.

THE zeal and ability with which Albert Brisbane has for several years devoted himself to the propagation of Fourier's doctrines of association, begin to be appreciated as they deserve. And whatever conclusive judg. ment his countrymen may pass upon this peculiar system, all must admit, that this earnest advocate of social reorganization has hastened and widened the great reform movement of our day. Few who have paid Fourier the respect he merits, of deep study, will deny that he has cast light, much needed and timely, upon the darkest problems, whether they adopt his social science without modification or not. And the Present will endeavor candidly to describe this system of "passional harmonies" and "attractive industry," with the hope that every such discussion may add new impulse to the flood-tide which is now sweeping Christendom and civilization to a more active recognition of the law of love. Space and time permit, in this number, only a few preparatory remarks.

The biographical sketches which we have of Fourier, are fitted to engage our interests for the man. Such brave and lonely consecration to a great aim, for such a series of years, claiming no sympathy, buoyed up alone by a sublime hope, communing in stillness with truth, is deeply grati fying. One feels as if such a patient miner must have treasured rich ingots. He claims, and has fairly won, a right to the patient heed of his fellow-men. When we add to this fact of his resolute pursuit of a settled object, the quality of his impelling motive, his indignation at the mean artifices of trade, his confidence that heaven has made possible a state of con

summate well-being and beauty for the human race, and his bold self-trust that, though seeking to the death, he would find the clue out of this labyrinth of inhumanity; when, finally, we are told by his friends of the grand style of character to which he was moulded, the justice, clear penetration, inflexibleness, and tender pity, the profound enthusiasm for men, as they certainly one day should be, the utter scorn for men as they were, we place a confidence in the sincerity of the teacher, that goes far to forestall our approval of his doctrine. And yet there is this abatement to our sympathy. The study for some forty years of "harmony," should have made his eye of love so clear as to see through wrong and meanness to the vital good; and the consciousness of a generous purpose should have disarmed petty opposition and criticism of their sting. One is pained at the sardonic sneer with which this keenest of observers cuts through disguises, and plucks away from shivering, naked folly the last rag that covers its shame. His denunciation is the condensed essence of bitter contempt. He should have been patient, too, with the dullards who misapprehended, and distorted in their show-boxes the truth he tried to teach. But let his papal arrogance pass. There is this comfort in listening to him-that you have before you a man who, with unblenching eyes and clear, steady voice, tells you truly and exactly what he thinks. One knows the ground on which both parties stand. There is no blowing first hot, then cold. He gives no quarter. He asserts without compromises, without ifs or buts, what he believes he knows. In the same spirit should he be met. Concessions, apologies, etiquettes, may be dropped. Here is earnest work. There is the asserted fact, there the announced law, there the argument and evidence. Test it. Is the coin sterling? For this number these few words must suffice.

But before closing, let the fact be noted, that the interest now awakening in this subject of association is all but universal in this country. Every day brings tidings of some new movement of those who are roused by a great hope to leave accustomed spheres of business, wonted social circles, the old mill rounds where for years they have been grinding saw dust for bread, and to enlist in these raw militia of social reformers. Such drilling and countermarching and sounding of drums and trumpet betokens that Providence is gathering the hosts of the faithful for some new battle with wrong. Doubtless, as in all recruiting, the idle and shiftless and weak, whose sandy foothold has slipped away and left them stationless in life, are occasionally drafted for these armies of industry. Doubtless brigands in heart, selfish and eager for gain, will also join. But the soul of this soldiery of peaceful conquest over injustice, are men and women sick at heart of the inevitable insincerities, unkindnesses, and numberless degradations of our present social state. In the various communities which within two years have been founded or are now in the process of formation, may be found some of the choicest spirits of our land. I wish here to give to all such a hearty invitation to communicate their hopes, prospects, and the results of their experience through the pages of the Present. As every grain of gold dust, and leaf of new trees and plants, and root and berry of the New World were precious and curious to Europe after the first voyages of Columbus, so every specimen of actual life from these Eldorados and Utopias is valuable to those who stand gathering their tools and clothing to follow. Send us news, brethren, from your little oases in the deserts, your coral islands in the sea.

W. H. C.

POEMS OF WILLIAM ELLERY CHANNING.

SHALL the fact, that we are closely bound by ties of blood, and yet more closely bound by friendship, hold my hand, dear Ellery, from writing of these poems? I can speak of you, as to you, with the more sincerity, because we are so nearly united that we cannot misunderstand each other. And I should stifle a pure impulse did I hesitate, in the first number of this little periodical, to thank you for the happy feelings which your volume has awakened. Would that, instead of these verses, could have been daguerreotyped in print words I have heard from you as we sat on the trunks of fallen sycamores and overlooked the vallies of the Ohio, where trees, single and in clusters, cast shade on the green meadows, and the winding river lay blue beneath the sky or gleamed in the distance. Your daily thoughts are better poems than you can write.

But now, as ever, comes up between us the old vexed question. "Why always of Nature, dear cousin; why not sometimes of Humanity, which is greater than Nature ?" Humanity, prithee! I am one of them, am not I? I am Humanity, or five feet six mches of it—a specimen of it, at least-so much and no less." "Yes! But you see the beauty of all growing things, why not of a growing race?" "Oh Philanthropy runlame! I see your moral enthusiast, now whizzing weathercock like under the sour East wind of Fourierism; now puffed asleep by Christianity's soft South; now wide awake in the bitter North of unbelief. Why will he not open his bosom to the balmy West of understanding." "Thou sceptic! Can you not believe in a society of men, worthy of this sun and sky, more beautiful than groves and flowers, with sweeter voices than the birds ?" "Well and good, when it comes; the day is rich enough as it is. Let us feel the Great Presence. What to me are your guesses about Humanity, Christianity, Association, Reform, but dead weeds by the wall. The heart is green and sweet with new flowers." Then, obstinate, unchanging son of your "dear mother earth!" I tell you, you shall reap as you sow. Never shall you know the full music of your shell, and thread the strings of your lyre with the grateful tears of your brothers, your countrymen, till you own yourself to be one beating pulse of this wonderful mankind, struggling as it is towards symmetry and perfectness. So have thy way, and tell me what Nature says to thee, and, better still, what man singly says, for deeply hast thou read the private heart.

A dropping shower of spray,
Filled with a beam of light,-
The breath of some soft day,-
The groves by wan moonlight,-
Some rivers flow,

Some falling snow,
Some bird's swift flight;-

GIFTS.

A summer field o'erstrown

With gay and laughing flowers,
And shepherd's clocks half blown,
That tell the merry hours,-
The waving grain,
The spring soft rain,-
Are these things ours?

THE EARTH SPIRIT.

Then spoke the Spirit of the Earth,

Her gentle voice like a soft water's song;-
None from my loins have ever birth,

But what to joy and love belong;

I faithful am, and give to thee
Blessings great, and give them free.

I have woven shrouds of air

In a loom of hurrying light,

For the trees which blossoms bear,

And gilded them with sheets of bright;
I fall upon the grass like love's first kiss,
I make the golden flies and their fine bliss.
I paint the hedge-rows in the lane,
And clover white and red the pathways bear,
I laugh aloud in sudden gusts of rain,
To see the ocean lash himself in air;

I throw smooth shells and weeds along the beach,
And pour the curling waves far o'er the glassy reach;
Swing birds' nests in the elms, and shake cool moss
Along the aged beams and hide their loss.
The very broad rough stones I gladden too;
Some willing seeds I drop along their sides,
Nourish the generous plant with freshening dew,
Till there, where all was waste, true joy abides.
The peaks of aged mountains, with my care
Smile in the red of glowing morn elate;

I bind the caverns of the sea with hair,

Glossy, and long, and rich as king's estate;

I polish the green ice, and gleam the wall

With the white frost, and leaf the brown trees tall.

But I have not room in the present number to say what I would of your poems, so, with one or more extracts, which speak from heart to heart, as the last one does from eye to eye, let me, for this time, close.

HOME.

'Tis far away, dear friend, 't is far away

Where we were born and nurtured, and grew up.
Thither to-day, as this new gate of time

Swings on its noiseless hinges slowly back,

Through the far vista of our boyish years,

Look with a saddened eye, ay! once more look,
Ere through these portals we pass idle on,

To see the coming painted on the wall.

I see a grand procession of fine hopes,

Each with his face wrapped in a sable stole,

And turned away from me their once bright eyes,

And mutely gazing on the snowy ground.
Then one, still farther down,-this mournful troop
They carry on a bier hung round with frost.
The light is like a dying person's eye;
For O! our passed years shall make us weep,
Nor shall our boyish years live but in dreams.

They say our home is in a better land;
That we are pilgrims here, and on this march
We shall stop never, but with soiled feet
Track the hard pavement with our dusty prints.
But yet to journey homeward were most fair,
And, no one knowing, burst upon their sight;-
Thou art come!-Indeed is't thou, from the far land?-
That joy was in their hearts. And as the lake's

Calm surface is at once waked into life

By one slight move, so should my sudden sight

Arouse their peaceful feelings. So will't be
When some pure man makes of this world a home,
All home,-both on new-years and birth-days home,
And all the people laugh within their hearts,
That this is city of God, both then and now.

THE POOR MAN.

Like a lion at bay,
Like a cold still day,

Stands the poor man here,
Few friends has he,

And fewer they be

With the turn of each year;

Who can buy him no house,
Who cannot carouse,

Nor his neighbors delight;
Whose cabin is cold,
Whose vestment is old,
Whose heart only shineth bright.

They eye him askance
With a feeble glance,
Half shake him by the hand,-
'Tis the poor man, he

Hath no gold to give to me;
There are richer in the land.

But the sun shineth fair
Through the blue-woven air,

To the poor man's mind;
His ears are all ready,
And his hearing is steady,
As rushes the wind.

The seed he puts in earth,
Of its fruit hath the birth;
Tall waves the fragrant flower;
He hath carved a broad stone
That the time may be known;
The dial telleth him the hour.

The birds over his head
Their broad wings spread,
Their song to him they sing;

The brook runs him to meet,
And washeth gently his feet,
While the meadows their joys bring.

CRAWFORD'S ORPHEUS.

THE lovers of the arts among us have been for some time much interested in the works of Mr. Crawford, both from what they have heard from various quarters of his statue of Orpheus, and from what they have seen of it in the engraving, which has been shown here; and now their attention is again called to this artist, by the exhibition in the Boston Atheneum] Gallery of a bas-relief made by him.

The merits of this work we do not now intend to discuss, much less those of the Orpheus, which we trust will soon be among us, when it can be better done; meanwhile, we are quite disposed to believe it deserves all the encomiums lavished upon it.

Our present object is, to consider the general character of the class of subjects from which Mr. Crawford has chosen, and to give our reasons for believing it unfavorable for the greatest success in the art, in our time.

We readily admit, that the fable of Orpheus is one of the best adapted, among the numerous and beautiful tales of Greece, for translation into marble in these days, as well on account of the allegorical application of it to the history of the soul's progress, which may be made, as on account of its peculiar beauty; but we still think that the artist would have done better, had he selected a subject more closely connected with the life and feeling of his time.

Neither Orpheus nor any other hero or god of antiquity can, in our opinion, be truly a fit subject for the artist of to-day, for the simple reason, that he cannot feel them to be heroes and gods, as their worshippers of old did.

The ideal of the Apollo and the Venus have passed out of the world, never to return; their life is extinct, or felt only for a moment, in faint reflex, by the man of sentiment, while gazing at the sublime and beautiful forms wrought under its burning influence, by those who recognized this feeling as the most elevated and intense portion of their lives. The emo