besides protecting our borders from Indian violence, a service always greatly under-estimated, the army could then, fortunately for us, be employed in conquering the forces of nature. We gained geographical knowledge of our country by the progress of detachments through regions which could be traversed in no other way. By it we made surveys which, while they opened a new land to civilization, gained the technical information required for the most stupendous engineering project known to the present age, the Pacific Railroad. Nor is the plan of that great work the only one of its kind for which we are indebted to officers of our army. We speak advisedly, when we repeat what, after special examination, was, in 1859, declared without contradiction in the United States Senate, to be true, that no great work of public improvement in the United States had been conceived and executed without the aid of some member of this particular class. "They are the men, over this whole land, who have inaugurated the great works of civil engineering which have been successfully executed. They were the teachers." For instance, any one who will take the trouble to examine the facts will find that the railroad system now existing in the United States was initiated, the earlier surveys conducted, and the earlier works usually brought to completion, in the hands of military engineers. This is true in almost all the States, and it will be found that "their works of internal improvement were generally planned and conducted by those who either were at the time or had been military engineers." Nor is it in the department of engineering alone that American science is indebted to the army. To enumerate the modes in which it has advanced our knowledge of the geology, botany, and natural history of the country, would be to repeat what is familiar to special students of those subjects, though overlooked by the world at large. We can only add, that the Delta Report is the last, and certainly one of the most valuable, of the treasures which we owe to the labors of officers of the regular army.

These services, rendered by the officers of the army, illustrate well the theory of our government, which declares the ballotbox to be the true way to decide political disputes, and which uses its army, unlike those of Europe, not in suppressing pop

ular freedom, but in enriching the nation by gaining bloodless victories over natural forces. All will welcome the day when we can return to this time-honored policy, and when our military engineers shall again descend the Mississippi with no hostile intent, but charged with the duty of completing the work of protection, by building that magnificent system of levees which the Delta Report projects.

ART. XI.

Considerations on some of the Elements and Conditions of Social Welfare and Human Progress. Being Academic and Occasional Discourses and other Papers. By C. S. HENRY, D. D. New York: D. Appleton & Co. 1861. 12mo. pp. 415.

THIS Volume is a contribution to that department of literature to which our habits and institutions have given a peculiar value; we mean those detached essays and discourses which are exacted from all of our prominent men of letters, as contributors to periodicals, or at the anniversary celebrations of literary societies. There is no way in which these men are brought so directly into contact with the public mind, or enabled to minister more effectively to the wants of young and active intellects. The reader welcomes his review or magazine as the visit of a friend, who comes at stated intervals to help him through a leisure hour, and to tell him what the world beyond his immediate circle is talking about and doing; and suspends, often, his judgment of books and events till he can compare it with that of a professional guide. The listener comes prepared to be pleased, and lends his ear under the unconscious influence of that gentle yet powerful excitement which human beings exercise upon one another when brought together by a common purpose and directing their attention to a common object. The speaker takes advantage of the attention which he knows he may count upon, to enforce some important truth, or awaken an interest in some favorite speculation. And the frequent recurrence of these occasions has

gradually built up a peculiar form of literature, in which some of our most brilliant minds have won their most brilliant triumphs.

In form and purpose these productions belong to the lighter literature of the day, their immediate object being to fill up a leisure hour agreeably, and their chief merit a graceful diction set off by a graceful delivery. Hence, out of the abundance which every twelvemonth brings forth, few are known beyond the circle for which they were produced, and fewer still outlive the year of their birth. Listened to with applause, printed by request, circulated gratuitously, they linger for a while on the centre-table, supply the materials for a few kind notices from friendly newspapers and reviews, and then slide into the cobwebbed corner, or drop noiselessly into the dusty receptacle in which the productions of rival wits, like the ashes of rival statesmen in Westminster Abbey, sleep peacefully side by side.

This, however, is but one view of the subject, and would give, if we were to stop here, a very erroneous impression of our estimate of these productions. Differing, as they necessarily do, in literary merit, and still more in merit of thought, they all have their origin in a common demand for intellectual entertainment, and thus afford, within certain limits, a standard for the appreciation of the intellect by which that demand is made. Men who undertake to please an audience will take care to select subjects within the comprehension of that audience. Men who endeavor to enforce a truth will make sure that their hearers already know enough about it to wish to know more. The successful speaker, like the successful writer, is always more or less in harmony with the minds of his contemporaries. If he teaches, it is from an elevation to which they can look up without straining their eyes. If he exhorts, it is by appealing to feelings and convictions which they hold in common with him. Even where he goes beyond them, opening new paths and letting in the remoter landscape through new vistas, he starts from some spot on which they can all stand together, and take in a common view. Thus, these occasional essays emanating from a great variety of independent sources, coming, some from a law-office, with its

atmosphere of briefs and writs and affidavits, some from the doctor's office, and wrought painfully out with memories of sick-rooms and death-beds thrusting themselves in between the paragraphs, some from the clergyman's study, some from the teacher's overwrought brain, and a few from the retreats of elegant leisure-agree when taken collectively, as expressions of wants and feelings common to the whole of the extensive class for whose entertainment they are prepared.

For the historian, therefore, they possess a peculiar interest, an interest altogether independent of their individual value, and founded solely upon their relation to the general mind. They are the language of one comprehensive class to another class still more comprehensive. They are the words of men who have gone out into the world and begun to prove it, to younger men who are still standing upon the threshold, with minds undecided and a path to choose. Hence these words must be about things in which they can all feel a common interest, hopes which experience has chastened, aspirations which trial has curbed, thoughts that have grown into convictions, and opinions that have been tested by opposition. They are transcripts of the speaker's mind, and mirrors of the minds to which he speaks, - retrospects for the one, a future for the other, equally of momentous concern to both. In some we find the germs of important truths which may give their coloring to a whole life; in others, friendly warnings and earnest exhortations, which, falling upon the healthy mind at the right moment, stir it up to hopeful exertion. When the speaker looks around him upon familiar scenes, dimmed somewhat, and obscured by unfamiliar faces, he feels that one of the decisive rounds is already run, and that it is good for him to come back again to the starting-point, and renew his strength before he returns to the race. And the hearer listens with the feelings of one who is girding himself up for the contest and looking anxiously about him for the means and the chances of victory. The speaker of this year was the listener of five years ago. The listener of to-day may be called back in a few years to offer the fruits of his own experience to the listeners of a new generation. Thus from year to year the same round is run, the same solemnities repeated, and the

1

same order of thought and eloquence sent forth upon the beaten track, over which so large a portion of the productions of the human mind moves on in dusty procession from the printing-press to the trunk-makers.

It would be a curious study to divide the brief history of our literature into periods of ten or fifteen years, and, analyzing the literary discourses of each period, to compare the results both in substance and in form. We should find in it, if we are not very much mistaken, a striking illustration of that remarkable harmony which, even under the most unfavorable circumstances, is always found to exist between the world of thought and the world of action. It would be seen, that some ideas were expressed in words before they were expressed in deeds; that others were little else than the summing up of general facts; that in some instances the impulse had been given; in some it had been received; but that in all, the general tone of thought as written out accorded wonderfully with the general tone of thought as acted out. Some new suggestion is made in education, and a dozen new schools spring up to test it. The writer, in looking thoughtfully about him for a subject, detects the indications of a great movement of the public mind; and, tracing it up to its source, attempts to point out its tendency and foretell its results. A succession of prosperous years gives a new impulse to industry and material growth. Thought seizes upon the favorable moment, and sets up her own claims to a share of the blessing.

It will be seen, too, that the characteristics of each period, although near the boundary-lines they seem to run into each other, are still clear and well defined. Woe to the unlucky orator who, living amidst his own thoughts in the seclusion of some country village, attempts to excite the enthusiasm of the audience of to-day by the same means that excited the audiences of ten years ago. The jest has grown stale, the illustrations are worn threadbare; his choicest rhetoric, which made his own veins tingle as he wrote, hardly keeps the eyes open. The world has been moving; and he who would speak to it and be heard must move with it, holding on manfully, as he moves, to every great truth, every sincere conviction, every tie which connects the present with the past, and helps