years by party votes so as to secure their approval of certain measures, the constitutional presumption that they will pronounce on the validity of acts of Congress, as on all other things, without fear or favor being turned into a legal fiction and made the laughing-stock of barroom politicians ?

Moreover, however much we may sympathize with the objects Congress has in view, however much we may desire to have reconstruction completed in its way, we are compelled to recognize the fact-the most glaring fact of history and human nature-that there are limits to the powers of legislation; that there are things it cannot accomplish; that, in all good political work, much, often what is most necessary to success, must be left to Providence, to time, to the growth of popular good sense, to the slow action of public opinion, and to the patriotism and moderation of public officers.

THE SOLDIER.

IN putting down a few of the thoughts which suggest themselves to us on seeing the greater and greater distinctness with which General Grant and Chief-Justice Chase appear on the scene as the two candidates between whom the Republican party will be expected to choose at the approaching nomination for the Presidency, we have not the smallest intention of making a contribution to the literature of the coming" campaign." We cannot help feeling that from the public character and career of the two men, as we all know them, one or two lessons may be drawn of considerable value to the community, no matter which finds favor in the eyes of the Convention-the more valuable because they are perhaps, each in his walk, the most distinguished men between whose claims to its confidence any party has ever had to decide.

The only unfitness for the Presidency in Grant which has been discovered thus far, and which can be called radical, irremovable, is that he is a soldier; and a very skilful letter from Washington, published in the New York Tribune, of which we spoke last week, and which probably expressed the sentiments of the chief of Grant's opponents, put this objection forward in striking terms, and cited Andrew Jackson's behavior in office in support of it. It is not Jackson's case, however, which suggests this objection. It is only by stretching the term more than it will bear that Jackson can be called a soldier at all. His military service was very brief-too brief to affect in any perceptible degree his character or tone of mind. Whatever there was about him that savored of the camp-his arbitrary temper, his impatience of opposition, his unscrupulousness in the pursuit of his ends, his contempt for the slow processes of law-he derived not from education, but from nature; or, if he learnt them at all, he learnt them not in the army, but in a very much worse school-Tennesseean court-houses and plantations in days when Tennesseean life wore only the thinnest possible varnish of civilization.

There would be abundant reason for dreading the elevation of a soldier to the Presidential chair here if he were to be surrounded by the social or political phenomena in the midst of which soldiers in other ages and nations have destroyed public liberty; but these are almost all wanting. Our case is not made sufficiently like the case of the Romans or French or English to enable us to take warning from their example. To object to a candidate simply because he is a soldier, is like the old lady's objection to having a gun handled, although she was assured it was not loaded. "Loaded or unloaded," said she, "it may go off."

But may not the practice of putting soldiers in high office, simply because they have done good service in the field, and although they have given no evidence of political skill or experience, become a dangerous one? May it not even, in states in which there is nothing, or next to nothing, for a lawless or ambitious temper to work upon, beget at last an insidious indifference to the political qualities of public servants, and an insidious contentment with military capacity only? We admit that it may; but there are circumstances in Grant's case which seem to us not only likely to make an exception in his favor harmless, but beneficial. We think, we honestly confess, that he has rendered and is rendering a service to the country, by his manner of performing his duties now, hardly inferior in permanent value to that which he rendered it in putting down the rebellion in the field, and it is a service which furnishes a better guarantee of future efficiency than ten thousand speeches and the same number of votes.

He is not a perfect being. He is not a man of the golden age, or a knight of the "great order of the Table Round." He is, perhaps, not a statesman in the strict sense of the word, or perhaps in the highest sense of the word; has probably but little store of the acquisitions which a statesman ought to have. But, unless we greatly err, he has that thing which of all others the times most need, and which the rising generation ought most diligently to seek after.

Nobody who observes public men carefully but must notice the widespread disposition there is amongst them to serve their country and their species in a large, vague way rather than in one way narrow and well-defined, to seek remote and haze-covered ends rather than near and clear ones, to gaze into the "illimitable perspective" rather than down upon the dusty highway which stretches out before their feet. There are few of us in any walk of life who do not prefer working generally for eternal justice and eternal truth to plodding eight or ten hours a day in an office or a committee-room. When one is engaged simply in upholding what Carlyle calls the "eternal verities," one is neither tied to time nor to place, and as the end of one's task is infinitely remote, it would be useless to display great diligence or great haste. We would any of us far sooner labor for the elevation of the entire negro race than devote ourselves to the elevation of one negro family. We are unwilling to believe that we can possibly be doing as much for the nation in faithfully appraising goods at the custom-house or faithfully inspecting whiskey casks as Jones is, who every night makes the roof tremble with his expositions of the rights of man or his scathing exposures of the frailties of "the party in power." So, also, it will be found that despots always prefer being responsible "to God and their own conscience," as they say, for the use they make of their power, to being responsible to any collection of human beings; and the average politician in a democracy, while never tired of acknowledging his accountability to "the people," hates to be held accountable to a governor or a president or a court of justice or any concrete representative of the people.

The objection to Grant is really inspired by European traditions, and, like a large number of European traditions-though, we admit, not all, by any means-that which disqualifies a successful soldier for the chief office of a republic is singularly inapplicable to his case. There are three great historical examples of the overthrow of free governments under the blows of the commanders of their own armies, but in every one of them society had been prepared for the catastrophe by a long process of decay and disorganization, or by a combination of circumstances which made free government impossible. When Rome fell before Cæsar, the spirit of republicanism had fled, and there had Now, the lesson of Grant's life is that this is a mistake on our part; grown up a large army, hardened in foreign conquests, utterly ignorant that, wherever we are placed, we are doing our highest and best poliand indifferent to the forms of law, and to which there was no other tical work when we are doing the work nearest at hand and to which force in the state capable of offering the least resistance. When Crom- we have been specially assigned; that there is no such servant of the well turned Parliament out of doors, it had become clear that the country as he who keeps his mind steadily fixed on what he knows to republican spirit had broken out before its time, and was seeking to be his business. When Grant took command of a regiment at the outestablish itself in a community in which the feudal ideas and manners break of the war, he did nothing but command it to the best of his were still full of life. The facility with which Napoleon accomplished ability. When he got command of an army, he did nothing and thought the coup d'état of the Dixhuit Brumaire was due to the same cause as of nothing but commanding an army. When he was made commandermost other French misfortunes-five hundred years of absolute mon-in-chief, he gave his mind to the duties of that office and to nothing archy, and the concentration of the national brain in the capital. else. He kept his gaze fixed on his books, papers, and reports, instead

of taking surveys of the country and the world, or getting up "views', its decisions were enforced by supernatural sanctions. The Supreme on reconstruction or universal suffrage. Being a soldier, he tried to be Court rests, like all other modern political institutions, on secular the best kind of soldier simply, and not a mongrel politician, with foundations--the popular respect for order, for security, for logic, for newspapers, documents, and drafts of speeches sticking out of the opinion. In a very few years its writs will run over a greater area than pockets of a uniform coat. What temptations an American soldier has the decrees of any potentate that ever existed, and it will hear the apto resist who pursues this course, we may infer from the example of peals of a more highly civilized and complex society than any tribuGeneral McClellan. When that unlucky personage found himself driven nal, lay or ecclesiastical, of which history makes any mention. Supback on Harrison's Landing, after those awful days of July, 1862, with posing no greater calamity to overwhelm us, it is difficult to avoid the an army perishing by inches in his hands, the nation looking on in expectation that its success will do much to hasten the consummation agony, and the world in suspense, with every inducement that was for which so many generations of philanthropists and philosophers ever applied to a human being urging him to concentrate all his facul- have sighed in vain--the submission to aregularly constituted tribunal ties on the dreadful game before him, he retired to his tent and of all disputes which are now usually decided by the sword. wrote out, for Mr. Lincoln's edification, his "views" on the state of the country-old "views," too, with which he had probably been crammed a month previously by New York politicians. It was one of the most ludicrous incidents in military history, but there was nevertheless something very pathetic about it. It meant not that he wilfully neglected his own work to meddle in other people's, but that, being weak-brained and overmatched, he turned readily for relief to one of the commonest indulgences of the day. It was so pleasant and easy to show Mr. Lincoln on paper how to govern the country at large; so hard to withstand the terrible Lee and his rebels on the other side of the hill. And he made his account by it. A large portion of the public hailed it as a lucky stroke, and the Harrison's Landing letter became a "state paper."

Merivale, in talking of the corruption of Roman society in the days of the empire, presents, as one of the great redeeming features, "the constant succession of brave, patient, resolute, and faithful soldiersmen deeply impressed with the sense of duty, superior to vanity, despisers of boasting, content to live in obscurity and shed their blood at the frontiers of the empire, unrepining at the cold mistrust of their masters, not clamorous for the honors so sparingly awarded them, but satisfied in the daily work of their hands, and full of faith in the national destiny which they were daily accomplishing." No modern army is wanting in such men; our army is certainly not wanting in them. Thousands of such were in its ranks during the late war, and they served with a purer zeal and a nobler hope than the soldiers of the ancient world ever knew. We do not despair of seeing the day when we shall have a civil service, too, which will create and foster this type of character. But few have hitherto proved able to resist the corroding action of the political atmosphere. Fewer have been able to look at the Presidency, or even a governorship or senatorship, as a possible prize without flinging reserve and dignity and sobriety to the winds, without despising "the daily work of their hands," and giving themselves over, body and soul, to any clique of charlatans or speculators who chose to constitute themselves their "political friends." Let us be thankful for the spectacle which Grant affords us of a man really great and genuinely American; a son of the soil, if ever there was one, who, conscious of merit, knows how to wait in silence and at his post for his reward, and, whether it comes or not, is satisfied with his share in working out the national destiny.

THE JUDGE.

THERE can be little question amongst thinking men-there has for thirty years at least been little question-that the establishment of the Supreme Court of the United States was a very important contribution to civilization. It has not, it is true, worked any striking change in modern society, and is perhaps only the germ of something better. But this it has done-it has brought under the regular, systematized control of law, not by theocratic pretensions like the Papacy, and not by conquest like the English Privy Council or House of Lords, a greater extent and variety of weighty human interests than have ever before been submitted to a judicial tribunal. It has pushed the dominion of reason into fields over which it never before exercised any sway, and has accustomed large and quasi-independent communities to abide by legal decisions in the regulation of some of their most important concerns. The Papacy tried to play this part in the Middle Ages, and it did play it to such an extent as the material and moral condition of the world permitted; but its jurisdiction was based on faith, and

The court has not lately been in favor with the public. Like so many other sacred and venerable things, it was prostituted in the service of slavery. Of all the foul and foolish deeds of which the proslavery zealots were guilty, there was not one for which the civilized world ought to owe them such a grudge as their dragging the court into the arena as the champion of their philosophy. The Dred Scott decision was not simply an offence against "free society;" it was an offence against all civilized society. It weakened that faith in the possibility of a human tribunal raised above even the fierce passions of great bodies of men, which the court during sixty honored years had been slowly but surely building up, and which, whenever it becomes firmly established, will seal one of the great fountains of human misery. The reconstruction crisis found its authority shaken, and a large portion of its prestige gone, in the presence of a majority whose will had been strengthened, passions roused, and impatience stimulated by four years of bloody war. All thoughtful men watched its course a year ago with considerable anxiety, lest it should, in false confidence in its strength, ruin what remained of its influence in trying to adjust questions which, whether it had jurisdiction over them or not, it was impossible to expect the Northern people, after all that had happened, to submit to its decision. They would not have submitted them to Moses and the prophets had they risen from the dead. Courts may prevent nations drawing the sword; but when once the sword has been drawn and blood spilt, they are visionaries who ask the victor to come to the bar, with his wounds still open, and plead as if he had suffered nothing, risked nothing, and won nothing. The court showed the highest wisdom in putting from it the dangerous task of deciding what it was that half a million of men had just died for, and we trust it will continue to show its wisdom in the same way.

Its recent decline in popular estimation, however, so far from making the office of judge in it an office to be lightly assumed and lightly laid aside or lightly worn, renders it, or ought to render it, in the eyes of every right-minded man, more sacred than ever-doubly sacred in view of the fact that the legislation of so many of the States, by making the State judges mere counters in the game of political intrigue and jobbery, has made the Federal judiciary almost the sole remaining refuge of the great and venerable traditions of judicial purity, independence, and decorum which ages worse in other things but in this better than ours, have handed down to us. No thoughtful layman can enter that small room in Washington in which those eight or nine old men sit, without feeling that he is in the presence of the strongest evidence the world has yet offered of its respect for moral force. No lawyer ought to go up and take his place amongst them without putting away from him for ever all political hope or ambition with greater earnestness than ever Trappist monk repudiated the world and its joys, without casting out of his heart, or at least smothering, every desire that would be likely to make him the debtor or suitor of any man or body of men. From that bench "the noises of the world" should all retreat—

"The loud vociferations of the street
Become an undistinguishable roar."

But should a judge relinquish all interest in politics? Not at all. What is not practicable is not desirable. He still remains a citizen, and he would be a poor judge, as well as a poor citizen, if what concerned the state did not concern him also; but it should concern him as it concerns the meanest and obscurest of us all, and not as a candidate for office or honors. Not one word of what we are saying is in

tended to cast the slightest imputation on any judge's integrity. But the political field. It is high time that public men were reminded it is not enough that a judge should be upright and independent. He that there is other work to be done for society than haranguing owes to the community not virtue only; he owes it the appearance and writing messages, and palavering with politicians. There is of virtue. He must not simply be just, but people must believe on the bench of the Supreme Court enough to satisfy the noblest and him just and incapable of succumbing to bad influences. He is purest ambition. We know of no position in which more can be done bound not simply to do his duty faithfully, but to inspire the com- to serve the best and largest interests both of the country and of the munity with confidence that he does it faithfully. Only half his value race, from which more valuable contributions might be made to the to the nation lies in the patient hearing and righteous decision of highest branches of human thought, in which a man of the highest men causes on the bench; the other half lies in the belief which his char- tal and moral qualifications might achieve a more splendid and enduracter diffuses that any causes which might come before him would be ing fame. Such an ambition is rare, and is in the gift of nature only. patiently heard and righteously decided. If by anything in his con- We cannot supply it where we do not find it; but we can at least see duct he shakes this belief, he is guilty of a gross wrong towards every that if the office is not sought for high ends it shall not be used as an man within his jurisdiction. aid in the attainment of low ones.

Now, a judge cannot sit on the bench of the Supreme Court and be at the same time a candidate for high office—that is, for something which is notoriously not in the gift of the people at large, but of a small body of men who, whatever else they are, are not amongst the purest and most high-minded of the community-without shaking people's confidence in him, without diminishing the popular respect for his office, and without opening for his associates and successors a straight and easy way to the grosser forms of corruption. People would not believe that Justice herself was pure if they knew she was working for the Chicago nomination.

We hear a good deal of high-sounding rhetoric about the necessity of having "a great jurist" in the Presidential chair, in order to complete the work of reconstruction. There is something almost amusing about this, considering that it comes from the very men who have been laboring night and day for the last year and a half to show that the President did not need to be a "jurist," that his province was simply

THE LEADING FACTS OF MR. WELLS'S REPORT.

We look on the annual reports of the Commissioner of Revenue, the second of which is now before us, as the most important "public documents" which have yet been issued, putting aside of course the reports of the scientific corps of the Government service. They are not only valuable contributions to political science, but they are the first attempts ever made to supply trustworthy data for legislation, and to supply the people with accurate knowledge of their own material condition and resources. What has been done in this, or in most other fields, by Congressional committees, may be said to be absolutely worthless. Few of those committees have men upon them qualified for such enquiries by taste or education; and the few men of this description who do get on them are overa wed or overpowered by the mere to execute and not to legislate. In this we entirely agree with them; politicians, that is, men who value facts solely for their effect on party measures. The result is that the reports of committees are generally of but we hold that if we do not want juridical lore from Mr. Johnson, we do not want it from Mr. Chase either. The country is almost dying of about as much value, in helping the public to form sound opinions, as "jurists." Every second man one meets in the street now is a "jurist." long articles in a party newspaper on any exciting topic of the day. Everybody in Congress is a "jurist," from the sergeant-at-arms up. In All other countries have been driven long ago, by their greater necessi Congress, however, and in the courts, jurists are needed, and if any ties, into establishing bodies of experts to collect materials, and make editor or orator knows of a jurist of remarkable powers, let him labor suggestions based on their knowledge and experience, for the use of to get him into one of these places, but not into the Presidential chair. the legislative body, whatever it may be; and European legislatures are There is something, we admit, admirable in Mr. Chase's long devotion all in the habit of treating their reports with respect and attention, and to the cause of the black man. We would not, if we could, take away acting on them if they act at all. We have never tried the experiment, one iota from the credit to which it entitles him; but it is extraordi- mainly owing to the exceeding simplicity of the governmental appanary that he should not see that since he ascended the bench his rela-ratus. Anybody almost was competent to manage it, and it may be tions to the blacks have totally changed.. To go about amongst them said to have been left to the management of anybody who chose to now, haranguing them as he did a year ago; to work in the lobbies of undertake it; and this class, we need hardly say, was largely composed Congress to procure legislation favorable to their interests, as he has of gentlemen who evolved their finance and political economy out of done, more or less, for the last two years; to go ostentatiously to Ohio to cast his vote at the State election, and from his windows in Cincinnati call the attention of the crowd to the fact this is not the way for a judge to serve the freedmen; it is the way to injure himself. The duty of a judge towards the poor and helpless and oppressed, his first and last and only duty, is to be a good judge. Whatsoever is more or less or other than this comes of evil, and produces evil. Whatever shakes confidence in the judiciary, in its independence or integrity, weakens the only real security the poor have for their rights. The rich and powerful can protect themselves without courts; but the poor and weak, if the courts fail them, have no resource. It may be safely said that a judge's value as a judge declines in the direct ratio of his display of political zeal, no matter how pure his motives. When Mr. Chase lobbies for the black man, he does what a hundred men in Washington can be got to do just as well for twenty-five dollars a day; when he goes to Cincinnati to vote for him, he renders him a service which a hodcarrier round the corner probably neutralized five minutes afterwards; and he at the same time does his protégés the mortal injury of leading the whole Democratic and half the Republican party to regard the Chief-Justice of the United States as a political partisan and a candidate for office.

We trust the people will not let this opportunity escape them of maintaining what is left of respect for the judiciary, by laying it down, once for all, that neither the Supreme Court nor any other court shall be used as a resting-place on the way to something more attractive in

the depths of their moral consciousness. Mr. Wells's first report, issued last year, was not very well received by Congress. It was an experiment, and it would have been contrary to all Congressional usage for the report of one man, outside the regular political circles, to have much weight. Moreover, at that time the majority were still tolerably certain that the science of taxation had no secrets for them. Complaints of depression in trade, it is true, reached them from various quarters, but they were tolerably well satisfied that only one remedy was needed, and that was to increase the tariff.

Mr. Wells is this year meeting with a much more respectful hearing, and we begin to hope that his report will do good service, and that its leading suggestions will really affect legislation. It is hard to say which is more valuable-its suggestions or its statements of facts. It is not possible within the limits of our space to give even an outline of the report itself, and we shall confine ourselves to-day to a summary of its most striking features, hoping to return to them hereafter in

detail.

It is pleasant reading, for two reasons. First, it is a crushing reply to those who are trying to persuade the public that it can only get relief from its burdens by breaking faith with the public creditor; secondly, it shows that the prevailing depression in business is greater in appearance than in reality, and is rapidly passing away without any help from legislation at all. The national debt has been reduced since the war by $266,000,000 (we omit the fractions), the interest on it by $15,000,000 per annum. It seems when General Butler or Mr. Pendle

410 per cent. So on through nearly every branch of industry: whatever depends on the soil and on private individuals is flourishing as nothing ever flourished before. Nothing is wanting but scientific legislation and honesty in officials to make us in a very few years the most prosperous and most lightly taxed community in the world. Do Americans know, or do they not, that they are the only people in the world whose income largely exceeds their expenditure; the only people whose taxation daily diminishes under the mere increase of

ton states the case that it would be an awful thing to withdraw all the legal-tender currency at the rate of four millions a month, and convert it into six per cent. coin interest-bearing bonds; it would make such a frightful addition to the burden of interest under which the unhappy people is now groaning. How much, after all, would it amount to Simply an increase per annum for eight years of $3,880,000, or, at the end of eight years, of $31,000,000 per annum ; but, as Mr. Wells shows, with our present means of reducing the capital of the debt, there is little likelihood that any absolute increase of interest, from the conver-population and wealth; and-we hate to write it, but it must be said sion of the currency into bonds, would take place at all. -the only people amongst whom there is any talk of cheating the public creditor?

What are the real causes of the weight of the public burdens? They are three in number: the heavy expenditure of the Government; clumsiness and multiplicity of the taxes, not their total amount; and the thieving and incompetency of officials. Mr. Wells shows that the expenditure of the Government is too large, and ought, as one means of relief, and a very important means, to be greatly reduced. For instance, he shows that if the expenses of the War Department were cut down from $83,000,000 per annum to $53,000,000, it would leave it still in possession of a revenue 260 per cent. greater than in 1861. This, and reductions on a similar scale in the Navy Department, civil service, and bounties, together with the total abandonment of Mr. Seward's purchases of foreign territory, would absolutely enable the Government to remove all internal taxation on all cotton and woollen manufactures, on all iron, steel, and machinery, on all leather and hat manufactures, and on all kinds of paper!

"FLIPPANCY."

THE dictionaries give the word more than one definition, but, as we suppose, flippancy," when found in the mouths of men other than lexicographers, has nowadays no sense but a bad one, and always means the thoughtless, slighting, disrespectful treatment of themes of discourse which by right ought to be treated with respect. But the vice of flippancy is thus far unlike what have been called the natural vices-all men indiscrimmurdering, the "black or negro" man, as the geographies say, with his inately are not to be trusted to judge of it. As regards lying or stealing or phrenologically undeveloped head, is, for all practical purposes, as capable of forming right conclusions as the highly Caucasian Professor Fowler would be, or any other man of good facial angle. From China to Peru and from Indus to either pole they dislike a liar or a thief, and kill a murPeople who are not immediately interested, and especially country derer. But flippancy belongs to that indefinitely larger class of human people, who read all that is said in the newspapers about internal rev-failings as to which we have nothing written on the tablets of our hearts enue frauds, probably imagine that it is, after all, a trifling matter, and to enable us to make a judgment absolute and universally applicable, but that the losses are mere drippings. Now Mr. Wells expresses a posi- are compelled to discard instinct, so to speak, and make use of brains. At tive belief, as the result of his enquiries, that "not over fifty per cent. of once, then, we come upon the widest possible difference of opinions. What the amount of the internal revenue taxes is received in the national is flippancy to one man at one time and place, is hardly more likely to seem such to another man at the same, or the same man at another time and Treasury." On turning to the tables, we find that the internal revenue receipts during the year 1867 amounted to $265,920,000-we again obligation to observe the feast of Pentecost or to practise auricular conplace, than all men are likely to be of one mind as regards the religious omit the smaller fractions. Therefore, what he asserts is that nearly fession. $266,000,000, due to the Government, has in one year either not been collected through the incompetency of its agents, or has been collected by them, and either stolen by them, or divided between them and the persons owing it. This is really an awful statement, especially when coupled with the account he gives of the almost absolute honesty and efficiency of the administrative machinery of the leading European countries. We use the word "awful," strong as it is, advisedly, because the mere loss of the money is only a trifling portion of the calamity. Its worst feature is the amount of fraud, perjury, and lying, on the part of an immense body of persons occupying respectable positions in society, which these figures represent. In fact, we doubt if a debauching agent of similar efficiency was ever applied to any Christian community. In some trades, the whiskey manufacture, for instance, cheating is so general that the few men who have tried to be honest have had to choose between cheating and beggary, and openly confess now that they chose the former. Flesh and blood cannot blame them. The guilt of it before God and man lies on the legislature and the public who, with these facts before their eyes, permit the civil service to remain in its present condition.

With reflections such as these we console ourselves for an inability which we discover in ourselves to agree with very many persons as to whether or not, in particular instances, some one--ourselves, for example-has or has not been guilty of flippancy. Flippancy in the abstract— disrespect shown to the truly respectable-we, as all men, rightly, naturally, unavoidably hate. Also, we are human, we suppose, in a dislike which we entertain for disrespect shown to whatever things we individually happen to venerate, and in a disposition to denounce as flippancy an irreverent way of treating them; orthodoxy is the name of our doxy, too, when we consult feeling. But we are no longer able, as in happier days, to believe without doubt that to other people our sincere denunciations of this and that, of flippancy, among other things, may not seem mistaken and, perhaps, foolish. As we now look at it, it is a thing to be freely admitted by made a mistake when he so severely condemned the self-sufficiency and all the Hapsburgs that the Austrian General Wurmser, or whoever it was, flippancy of which General Bonaparte was guilty when he showed such marked disrespect for all well-established rules of warfare as was exhibited in the battles and victories of the well-known Italian campaign. And, however much we may have respected General George B. McClellan, we are willing to confess that the flippant critics who urged an advance on Yorktown and "Prince John" Magruder turned out at the last to have not been so very far wrong as some friends of ours who had friends at

Another encouraging feature of Mr. Wells's report is the demon stration he affords that our present financial depression is simply part of the great wave that has passed over the commercial world every-West Point succeeded in making us partially believe. where, while our case is really not so bad as that of the English and French. Moreover, the recuperative process is going on amongst us at a rate few of us dream of. Immigration, Mr. Wells calculates, makes a positive yearly addition to the wealth and producing power of the country of one hundred and fifty millions of dollars. The crops last year were, though not so good as was expected, greater than ever before. There is just now great depression in the cotton trade, and yet there is from 15 to 20 per cent. more machinery at work in it than before the war. Who that ever sees much of iron manufactures, or rather of the newspapers devoted to the iron interest, does not think the iron trade a sickly plant struggling feebly for existence? Yet it has increased since 1810, under all kinds of tariffs and disturbances, 2,371 per cent., while population in the same period has only increased

Or, for further example, we may, for our part, say that the Honorable Ben Wade is "one of our grandest public men," or, to use Miss Anthony's words, is "a right royal old fellow," and we may not only fervently say this, senator of the United States ought to know something; ought to have had but fervently believe it. Still, should a person who avows his belief that a some education; ought, for instance, to have some knowledge of political economy, of jurisprudence, of the history of this and other countries, as well as of the history of parties in this country, of the rule of three and the rules of grammar, to speak briefly, as well as of the golden rule as applied to the relations of black men and white-should a person of this sort, we say, treat as an entirely ridiculous thing some of Mr. Wade's acts and sayings, we should not see our way clear to condemning him absolutely for what would perhaps seem to us flippancy. So also of the representatives of their constituents in the lower House of Congress. We believe, say, in Mr. Banks;

we know that without special training for political life, without having given very many midnight or other hours to the study of the effete institutions of Europe, or to the writers on international law, or to other writers, he has risen, by his own laudable exertions, to the dignity of representing Massachusetts as a Member of Congress, and the United States as Chairman of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, and, as we have said, perhaps we believe in him. But it is true, too, that we admit the possibility that some not over light-minded man may be moved to laugh Mr. Banks's Fenian speeches and naturalization reports and eight-hour bills to scorn; may, merely from a sense of humor, ridicule them for what seems to him their intrinsic absurdity; may, because he thinks that they are folly, and that ridicule is the most dangerous foe to folly, make fun of them because they are things discreditable to the country, and yet through it all, whatever he seems to us to be, may, from his own point of view, be anything but flippant.

There are not a few people—who, like ourselves, have their own opinion of certain royal old public men-who, without hesitation and even with violence, stigmatize as flippancy anything but the solidest and most serious way of treating all that these gentlemen say and do. Some man known as 8 leader" frames a stupid resolution or a wildly absurd bill, or makes a really silly speech-talks after a fashion which, if he used it in talking to his neighbors about private matters, would cause them to speak of him, and to him, with extreme lightness and it is commonly pronounced flippancy, of a sort to be deplored much and condemned very much, if the laugh which rises to the occasion is not decorously stifled. The proper thing to do, it is held, when one is contend

ing with such a warrior as Mr. Ashley, for example, is to look on apparently for entrenchments, drags out his frowning batteries of Quaker guns and gets them into position. Then, Mr. Ashley, being a leader, one is industriously to levy great numbers of horse, foot, and dragoons, to prepare large dox distance, approach him gradually, as if one were really in fear of his abilities as an engineer, and finally admit him to an honorable capitulation. To send a sergeant's guard of light cavalrymen to capture his fortalice

with anxiety and sleepless vigilance while he tears up the sod, shovels dirt

trains of siege artillery, to sit down before him, open parallels at the ortho

would, we are told, be a species of levity so far from decent as to be undoubted flippancy. This, as we have said, is not altogether our way of thinking. We are not sure that we have a right to ask other persons to give Mr. Ashley or Mr. Banks, or this or that other grand public man and right royal old fellow of a statesman, as much respect as we accord them; if people think they see a fool, why, at all events, there are worse uses to which they might put him than make him food for mirth, and so long as they do nothing more to him than that, we shall not violently insist on their adopting our own view of him.

PARIS GOSSIP.

PARIS, December 23, 1867. CURIOUSLY in contrast with the wonderful displays of elegant and luxurious objects which, at this season, bring all Paris out into the streets to gaze and to desire, is the fact that a poor, shivering wretch was arrested, a day or two ago, as he was hurrying away from the Garden of Plants with a blanket he had just "cribbed " from one of the boa constrictors! There is, in fact, much distress in this splendid city; but the administration distributes large sums every winter among the distressed portion of the popula tion, and private charity, also, does a good deal. One of the most useful of the many channels through which charitable help is dispensed here is the institution of "Economical Soup-kitchens," which, begun in 1853 by a well-known philanthropist, have demonstrated the possibility of furnishing a meal of good, nourishing meat-soup-21 oz. cooked meat, half a pint of cooked beans, or a pint of rice-soup-for one sou each portion. The first establishment was worked at these prices during the whole winter, and was found to have realized a profit from the sale of bones and greasy water. The following winter sixty-eight of these soup-kitchens were organized by the Prefect of Police, and sold from forty-five to forty-six thousand portions daily, or a total of over five millions during the four months through which they were kept open. The number of these establishments has increased Several of them are supplied by the Emperor, the Empress, and the Prince every year, and they are now to be found in every part of the city. Imperial, the distribution being gratis, and admission being given by tickets certifying the indigence of the holders.

had their annual opening; one or two have had a dinner, but the greater The various sections of the Academy and other learned bodies have just number have contented themselves with meeting and making speeches. Great are the efforts now making to obtain tickets for the approaching reAbbé Geratry; the former will pronounce a eulogium on Victor Cousin, to whose arm-chair he succeeds; the latter, in monkish garb, will sound the praises of M. de Barante. The speeches of the two new members are ready, and have just been submitted, as usual, to the preliminary examination of

ception of the brilliant Republican barrister, M. Jules Favre, and of the

their respective friends.

The Conservatory of Music has also had its annual celebration, accom

panied by a distribution of prizes among its pupils. Its president, the ever green Auber, was as active, alert, complimentary, witty, caustic, and charming as ever, and did the honors of the occasion with as much animation as though sixty years had been struck from his existence.

M. Flourens, the eminent naturalist and physiologist, member of the Academy, has just died at 76. He wrote a book to prove that the average duration of human life should be, according to certain natural indications, one hundred years; but, to the disappointment of the friends of his system, he has not lived to demonstrate the correctness of his reasonings. The well-known Italian librettiste, Piave, the most assiduous collaborator of Verdi, has just departed this life; as has also, to the great regret of her friends and the musical public, the charming and accomplished singer, Madame Nautier-Didiée, whose sojourn in Naples has failed to arrest the malady which has carried her off in the prime of her days and of her talent. the most liberal patron of art in all its branches, has fallen a victim to his benevolence. He went to Rome to attend upon the victims of the late fighting, and having given his cloak to a wounded soldier who was suffering greatly, he took a cold, and died a few days ago.

But to speak with perfect seriousness, the charge of flippancy, as we are accustomed to hear it made, we have got into the habit of disregarding almost wholly. In those instances to which our attention has been most particularly called, nine times it has seemed to us a charge to be smiled at to one time that it has seemed well-founded. Generally it is preferred by a person belonging to one of two classes. The accuser is either one of those people—and they are more common tha hopeful people are apt to think-The Duc de Luynes, the richest member of the French aristocracy and who are totally destitute of humor, a person unable to distinguish between weight and heaviness; a person whom facts overpower and whom truths do not address at all; a person who, to speak in the concrete, thinks that Mr. B. F. Perry ceased to be Mr. Perry and became a sage to be respected when he was made Provisional Governor Perry; a person who would think oratorical nonsense merely a speech until he saw it printed in the Congressional Globe, and then would think it constitutional eloquence; the accuser as we know him is, we say, either such a person, or else he is an offended partisan-a literary partisan or a partisan of some religious creed or a political partisan-a Republican, say, who appears to think, because Mr. Greeley has served the party well and served mankind well, that laughable things done by him are not to be laughed at.

Now, as to the first of these two sorts of people, there is nothing, we suppose, to be done with them; till the end of time it will be necessary to suffer, or rejoice, under their reprehension. As to the second class, considered as a distinct one—the boundaries of the two certainly overlap, and overlap so much that sometimes, if one is angry with partisans, the classes seem almost coincident-we can only recommend them to use the philosophy which we ourselves endeavor to put in practice-counsel them, when some hero of theirs, or some favorite doctrine, is treated with what appears to be too little respect, to consider in their secret hearts whether perhaps they themselves have not been unwise in their worship and belief.

The lovers of Mendelssohn will be glad to learn that the son of the illustrious composer, who is professor of history in the University of Heidelberg, is bringing out the posthumous works of his father. He has just published an eighth book of the famous Lieder ohne Worte," quite as beautiful as their widely-known predecessors, and is about to publish a symphony called "The Reform," a sonata, and a funeral march composed for the anniversary of the death of his friend Norbert Bergmüller.

The lectures for young women so brilliantly inaugurated at the Sorbonne are being attended not only by a large gathering of girls of the lower and middle classes, for whose benefit they were mainly designed, but also by the daughters of people of the highest rank, among others by the Empress's nieces, the daughters of the late Duchess of Alba, who are passing the winter with their Imperial relative.

The return of Christmas, ushered in by the imposing concomitants of the "Midnight Mass," has been celebrated with all the pomp usually displayed by the Catholic Church in the observance of its "high-tides." The finest voices of the various operatic troupes, the best instrumentalists of the various orchestras, have rendered the noble creations of the Catholic muse