From the Providence Evening Press, Dec. 11. THE POPULAR MOVEMENT DEFINED; ITS COURSE REV. DR. E. H. CHAPIN. so much of human nature around us cooked crisp, and flabby, spiced, garnished and over-done in theological ovens; in political stew-pans; in fashionable skillets, it makes one's heart rejoice to know there is unspoiled produce in the market. Of course, where there is the most human nature there is the most raw material, and therefore the most possibility Notwithstanding the unfavorable state of the wea- of use that the development of the raw material may ther, a crowded audience attended last evening upon confer. This indicates what may be said of the people the third lecture of the Lyceum course. The subject as a source of power. For there would be but little of Rev. Dr. Chapin's masterly discourse was "The use in discussing the exclusively political bearings of People." We present a few extracts as specimens the phrase "popular power." That phrase has a sigof its vigor and profoundity of thought and its energy nificance beyond the question of the divine right of and eloquence of expression. kings and the authenticity of social order. If rude The question, said Dr. C., embarrasses us at the warriors enthroned their sovereign upon shields, it outset, "Who are the people?" We are told that was probably because he had more of the raw mathe word is used to designate the vulgar, the mass of terial in him, both for good and evil. In the people illiterate persons. It is curious to discover how this are embosomed the springs of the world's life, unquarphrase, which is so common in our talk, covers an in- ried mines of the world's possibilities. Of course it distinct and subtle and shifting reality. Its meaning is possibility for evil as well as for good, Whatever changes in different lands, and becomes hardly the of meanness, or vice, or demoniac rage may be presame fact in an Oriental despotism and a Western cipitated into history, lurks and threatens there. Republic. It signifies one thing in the adulation of Whatever of liberty and order, of loyalty and faith, the demagogue, and another in the emphasis of aris- may take a luminous shape in the earth and achieve tocratic contempt; one thing as the synonym of its ends, its fountain-head is there. liberty and order, and another as the most awful The power of the people comes out in what we call chaos of seething forces and Saurian monstrosities ever unveiled in the processes of Providence; two different pictures, when, as Carlyle exhibits them, "they speak in the hieroglyphic of petition and are answered with the gallows forty feet high, or when they speak with pike and guillotine and tumbrils clattering through the highway of death." national character. Often it is manifested only in shrewd worldly phrases, political sharpness, aptness in trade, material enterprise. In such cases there are proof-marks of its real depth and vigor. The leading minds of a nation are never more than adequate measures of the intrinsic power of the nation. While these may rise, isolated from the main power, I am really inclined to believe that, as a palpable, and flow down from such individualities, still they tangible fact, there is no such thing as "the people." indicate the level above which they have grown, as "The people" is a historically working force, appear- the tree indicates the soil. It has been well said, no ing in masses of men, operating through masses of great general ever arose out of a nation of cowards, men; but it is not masses of men. "The people" is no great statesman out of a nation of fools, no great an abstraction. That which is appreciable in history artist out of a nation of materialists. It is only under that name, as the working force or sentiment where the germs of popular life are quickened by of the people, the will of the people, the power of the mighty events that great men become mighty, that people, is no more identical with any particular num- the commonwealth sparkles with constellated names, ber or multitude than gravity is identical with the that the entire atmosphere round about is electric stone, or heat with the flame. with noble life. When a nation, long accustomed to This phrase is inseparable from vast organization; the arts of peace, moving in the order of tranquil and in proportion as the organization of masses is per- times, is suddenly struck by the shock of danger and fect we are able to recognize the fact and ideal of the summoned to rescue the very ark of its inheritance, people. Therefore, we can hardly dignify with this then you may see laid bare, underneath the common majestic title every wild tribe and wandering herd soil of events, the roots of an individual greatness. that helps to make up the mosaic of humanity. Our Then the leader is no more advanced, the hero is no attention need not be taken up with what the Yan- more heroic than the people. He may be in them as kee would call "all creation." We need have regard a guid...g impulse and a joyful inspiration. But only to organization in which there is life. Let us more are they in him. He leaps from the womb of then direct attention more specifically to the people their personality. His courage is tingling in their What I have to say m... blood. His energy concentrates their entire will. be brought under three divisions-the people first, as His spirit is the interpretation of the people's will and a source of power; second, as a tribunal of judgment, the people's power. and third, as a sovereignty of the future. in their living functions. Nobody will deny the attractiveness of the natural A distinguished writer of our day speaks of "the landscape; but nobody will deny its greater attractiveraw material of human nature." The expression ness when associated with human effort and sacrireally opens a refreshing train of thoughts. We see fice. Men will turn away from the loveliest scenery to visit the battlefields of ideas. So the shores of the The power of the people is mightier than instituupper Potomac put on a more sacred look because tions, greater than social distinctions. Institutions there the General fell cheering his flag, and the blood are to be valued, as they help or hinder this. All of heroes mingled with the crimson of the autumn true progress is not to be rated by the multiplication sunset. of external conveniences, but by the development of I maintain then that genius, which I assume to be manhood; not by the material grandeur of States, the most undeniable form of great power that enters but by the welfare of the people. Modes of governinto the world, not only often has originated among ment are secondary problems. There are conditions the people, but drawn from them the material of its where despotism, transitionally working toward comgreatest elements; the richest mine in which it works mand, is better than freedom inconsiderately snatched is the concrete man, opening there the revelation of a and weakly applied. Coronets and constitutions are common nature and the hidden lines of common ex-questions of torm. With something more than poperience. It introduces us to new types of manhood; litical significance we may consider the people a enriches the world; brings us Lear to touch the source of power. spring of exhaustless pity, and Falstaff to open the In what sense or to what extent may the people be sluices of exhaustless fun. We are attracted to this regarded as a tribunal of judgment? This will show that it gives us, not because it is so rare, but because the pertinency of the remarks with which I comthere are so many like them. It bequeaths us such menced the lecture, for it is essential to the question affections and temper in order that we may learn there of definition. Understanding by the people, an unare such realities to love. We become more con- organized, chaotic mass, there is no tribunal of judgscious how rich humanity is in rough diamonds. ment. When we find a sentiment which fulfills the I acknowledge then, most freely, that the world is condition of the old maxim, “being by all, always largely carried forward by the agency of individuals. and everywhere expressed," we should carefully I admit that the people originate little or nothing. pause before we refuse to accept it. The task of difStill they are the source of power from which indi- ficulty is to get an induction-to get that which is viduals emerge, and by which they do their work; a constant in the expression of popular sentiment. power that works for them, because of them. They Leaving the more comprehensive problem, let us exert for good or evil that silent pressure of influence, examine the decision of the popular mind in specific mightier than single objects. They pass by Courts forms. There is a tribunal of popular judgment conand Statesmen, and take little note of them. The cerning Literature and Art. The popular tale of the eloquence that maintains the People's Cause, sucks day may have as frightful a title and as meteoric covfrom a fountain as exhaustless as the sea. ers, as any that was ever pored over by servant girls in a dim irreligious light, or by furtive apprentices under the shade of three cent cigars. De Tocqueville says no man had any suspicion of what the French revolution was to become until it took place. Arthur Young thought it would increase The amount of what is called solid reading will existing privileges. We know that it annihilated vary with the education of the mass. The statistics them. Others supposed that France would be ex- of free libraries would furnish evidence that the readpunged from the system of nations. It is well known ing of the people does not compare unfavorably with that France became greater than ever. So small is the reading of the few. What really is the popular the value of predictions of sagacious minds concern- literature, not of the day, but of the world and of the ing the results of popular movements. Still we time-the literature which pierces through the differknow something of the power of the people in their ent strata of intelligence, clear down to the comunited action. We know that upon the face of the monest level of mind, and lives there in these sentiearth there is no tyranny so hateful as popular ty- ments and household words forever? Such are the ranny, no despotism like that of fickle passion and greater works. This constitutes the patent of greatlawless will, nothing that howls for blood and ness. They touch the core of the country. While they crushes for violence so terrible as the tiger fury of sweep through the greatness of humanity, we are not the mob. We have an idea of what this movement touching the literature which is created by the people is, when in some great hour of peril the electric blast—a few songs and ballads, grown like wild strawof patriotism rends the veil from the heavens and the berries in the fields of the olden time. The people mass stands bristling before us, a nation in arms. will yet throw out that much advertised for, but unBut has anybody yet disclosed all that abides in the purchaseable article, the national anthem, when the depths of the popular life. The familiar aspects of the popular heart is glowing with the inspiration of city weary us with monotonous reiteration. But mighty events. The people are dazzled by meretrithere are undiscovered capacities of sinning, sorrow-cious qualities, yet they recognize and reverence the ing and suffering, of love and faith, of meanness, de- excellent when it really appears to them, and someceitfulness and appalling vice. He who hunts for times approve it before any higher criticism. We them will find more than he anticipates. But let us may adopt the verdict of the masses where the favor not be unjust to those noble constituents of our na- of the critics is withheld. ture, the countless charities, the uncomplaining heroism, the martyrdoms that have no palm. There is another form in which popular judgment crops out: those fatherless sayings which pass from lip to lip and from land to land-which Lord Ches- Material improvement has been the great characterfield declared no man ever uses, but in which Lord teristic of the time. Almost every scientific discovBacon said were discovered the genius, wit and spirit ery turns into some instrument for the help of the of a nation. Popular judgment appears in proverbs people. Every great discovery is for democratic use. -small, pithy bits of circulating wisdom. They No feudal knight ever mounted such a steed as the bear the image and superscription of the human people's steam-horse, or rode in such an imperial mind, and indicate their coinage in human nature. chariot as that which plies its wings of fire to carry Nothing is so much to be dreaded, nothing is so the laborer on his way. The telegraph sends comthreatening to the experiment of popular institutions, mon life through the great masses of the world. as the play of men in power upon the lowest ele- Stretched over mighty continents, and above the ments of society. And yet even this must be carried abyss of disunion; through the clouds of war it beon through a deceit of names. An honest treason comes the loyal pulse of the nation, beating from sea cannot operate in masses of men. When known as to sea. treason, the appeal of country, faith and liberty rous- Nor is the other element of popular civilization es their enthusiasm. Therefore treason, when it wanting-the internal element. Some may say we works through multitudes, must assume some guise have lost in depth what we have gained in width. of patriotism or religion. Rebellion must appear to Still it is better that knowledge should enrich the be a struggle for sacred rights. Treason is a favor- common soil than crystalize in the cold silence of a ite spirit of managers, leaders and intriguers, invok- few developed minds. ed in select secresy. It is poured into the popular It is enough to be warranted by the indications of car under some far nobler name. The people, left to the past and the present, and the palpable fact that a clear idea in regard to the interests of the country the elements of power are passing from the few to the which they know to be a portion of themselves, are many, in saying that of the people is the sovereignty always loyal. Indeed, they feel an assault upon of the future. But there is a moral element to be that, more than an assault upon themselves. It is an considered-the element of endurance and sacrifice. encroachment upon the very corporate interest with "The Book of the Prince," says a writer, "is closed which the fibres of their being are intertwined. The forever, and the book of the people is as yet unwritmysterious instinct of patriotism rises to the very ten;" but there are those who seem to prophecy for brim of the crisis before their roused spirit, party that book a brief record and a speedy close; who limitations shrivel as before a sheet of fire, and the entire life of the people sparkles and quivers in the flag. coldly abandon ours in this our day of tribulation, and think they already behold its fearful apocalypse terminating in darkness and in blood. Perhaps they It is to what we call public opinion that we are ac- can imagine they see the shadows of discrowned emcustomed to look for popular verdicts. It varies with pires and ruined republics moving to meet us in our times and places, carries the attention off from com- coming, crying out from their awful depths "art thou mon grounds of thought and feeling, and raises the become weak as we are? art thou become like unto complex question that centres upon the famous maxus?" What in this intense crisis may occur to us as im vox populi vox Dei. Is the voice of the people the voice of God. There are instances when we may an But if we have correctly traced the process of the a nation is hidden among the secrets of Providence. swer no: Yet that voice grows audible in the fixed past and of the present, then is the sovereignty of the conviction of the vast majority. New doctrines gain the readiest hearing among the be very hasty reasoning or the dictate of malicious people among the revelations of Providence. It must common people. There are less selfish interests to be hatred that leads men to predict the permanent dedisturbed. Ignorance is a protection against many feat of our great cause from our present national criconsiderations which embarrass the judgment of thesis. It is like predicting the destruction of the solar educated. This by no means proves the truth of the new doctrine. The common people heard the Great Teacher gladly, but the proof is in the Divine word uttered, not in the many who receive it. The voice of God brings its own witness to the people, and does not need the ratification of the people. No true word rests upon the sanction of mere numbers. And here arises a right which must be maintained as strenuously against the encroachments of the multitude as against the encroachments of the mob-the right of private judgment and individuality. system, because of the perturbations of a planet. The popular movement is too vast, too irresistible, too ti dal to be turned back. The discord is not between Democratic elements themselves, but between them and those feudal incongruities still entangled with them. In a special sense ours is a national cause. The immediate cause is the instinct of patriotism bursting forth to defend the land dear to us by many memories and many hopes; an instinct which is not so rare that men In the people we behold the sovereignty of the fu- should be surprised at its indications. There are men ture. This sovereignty is predicated upon every lead- who ask us to give up our nation. Even Punch, that ing indication of the present. It is predicated upon has hitherto defended with all its humor the great the advance of civilization. The latter is indicated interests of humanity, wonders at our going to war by two things; material improvement and eternal ele- for the Union. But we are doing what any people vation. would do who deserve the name of nation. Those who deprecate our zeal would be the last to surrender Yes, this is a national movement; the movement of their country to the hands of violence, or suffer the that patriotic sentiment that rises to repel an assault least assault on the nationality that binds it together. upon national life, a movement that identifies the naThese are the dark days of the nation, but they are tion with the soil, the land, the whole land, the uniits sublime days, and constitute a season in that pro- ted inheritance of those two contending, but yet marcess through which a people, instead of falling, may ried sections,-married by this wedding ring of glit more nobly rise. We needed the trial. With our tering lakes and ocean waves, with Washington's energy and enterprise; with our flag on every sea; grave for its signet. What therefore God hath joined from the golden coast of the Pacific to the many together, let no man put asunder. masted shores of the Atlantic; from the grain fields At the last public dinner given to Wm. Pitt, when of the West to the staples of the South, we have been his health was offered complimenting him for having a brilliant people, a smart people, but hardly a great saved the country, his reply was, that the country people; for a moral element is necessary to this re- had saved herself through her own exertions. Any sult. Vast material organization and diffusion, active other country might do so by following its example; intellectual life, are not enough. We must have a mean country is that which will not make the atpatience, heroism and self-sacrifice. Heretofore, as a tempt. people, we have been like a rude and powerful boy, Yet it is not merely a national movement-a moveheir to a marvellous inheritance, with scarce a check ment for the people in that broad sense in which I on our comfort or our will. We must undergo that have used the term. Mr. Groat has described the power heat, pain and pressure-the tragic doom by which of Democratic sentiment to keep the fire of patriotism other nations have been smelted into manhood. Not burning in a Republic when it was powerless under any by boundless prosperity, but by suffering, must be other form of government. This very movement vinwrought out the Celtic loyalty and the Saxon strength. dicates and does not impeach the people. It cannot When a nation cannot separate its enthusiasm from be denied that in a peculiar sense this country repreits agony; when the fair soil sweats blood; when sents the principles of "the people" everywhere. No mothers sit and think of their unshrouded sons lying where else is true popular liberty enjoyed with such stark on the distant battle plain, then swells the fullness. The very soil seems to have been set apart matured life of that nation; then come out the mas- for such instruction. Asia is the continent of germs. sive features of the people; then settles the look of Europe the continent of diffusion, America the contimajesty on the land. No great sentiment like re-nent of results. Hidden long from the vision of the ligious conviction or love of country that can coun- world, it was at last thrown open for the grand exteract the selfish and narrowing tendencies of a mean periment of the people governed by the people. devotion to material objects and personal comfort, can ever powerfully operate until something occurs to make us feel the value of its objects. The conditions necessary to solve the relations of man to power, have been most amply furnished by Democratic institutions. The possibility of their duvidual exertion. Why are not these the prominent ration must depend upon freedom of action and indi characteristics of our national movement of all others? Love of country, like all other love, is a deep habitual sentiment. The members of a prospered family, move by the gravitation of their love but do not feel its force. Let sickness touch one of these members, What then if these institutions planted here should and then the full tide of that love is felt in the heart; fail? But they will not fail. God helping us, we do ministrations of unsparing sacrifice are awakened; not mean to let them fail. What if we should grow carelessness grows considerate; the rude voice gentle. impatient, weary and despairing in our work? But True love becomes a mighty consciousness when danwe must not. The struggle of the hour is the same ger threatens its object. Men feel how dear their old struggle the people have carried on for ages, the country is when danger threatens that. Then indeed our selfish, narrowing tendencies dissolve, and the en- few, of democratic idlers with aristocratic assumption, contest of the despised many with the domineering tire people rising to meet the emergency, rises in the the profounder conflict which underlies the rest, the noble scale of manhood. The great age of the Reconflict of the popular element with those who essenpublic is not its commercial age, its literary age, its age of conquest and discovery, or, if such a thing but it is deeper than that. Look at those suggestions tially despise it. You may make slavery the cause, may be, even golden age. The great age of a Repub-and ordinances in the State of Virginia of depriving lic is its martyr age. the people of power, aud you see the whole cause of the movement. Who has seen those files of young armed soldiers marching through the streets and not had his eyes filled with tears as he thought| how short has been the time since those were children's hands resting on mothers' bosoms, and how, somewhere hearts are yearning for them, and over every one of them there hovers & holy prayer. Yet who has not had his heart thrill with exultation because the country has been deemed worthy of such heroism, and because there is so much heroism worthy of the country. The cause of the people will not fail; nor, as we With reverence may it be said, not only of a single trust in Providence, will we fail in maintaining it. race, but of all mankind, with the Red Sea before, and the Promised Land beyond,-to mankind at large has issued the Divine decree to go forward. Look at the argument of history, sometimes proceeding in silence, sometimes in the Divine strength of virtue and truth, served by every fact and every in- thousand kinds of plants ever failed to bear the strument. What need to name the men who have right seed? Have they ever deceived us? Has a conducted it: Hampden marching to the strife with seed of wheat ever yielded barley, or a seed of a tyranny, with no steps backward; Russel riding to poppy grown up into a sun-flower? Has a syca execution, with liberty ever riding by his side; the more-tree ever sprung from an acorn, or a beechnoble blood of its crusade makes red the grass of tree from a chestnut? A little bird may carry Lexington, and yet again, straight from hereditary away the small seed of a sycamore in its beak to veins, crimsons the streets of Baltimore. Now it feed its nestlings, and on the way may drop it on sets its propositions in the shape of bayonets, and the ground. The tiny seed may spring up and speaks from the lips of cannon. To us has it been grow where it fell, unnoticed, and sixty years after given to lead in this great argument of history. The it may become a magnificent tree, under which the flag first stricken down on the soil of South Caroli- flocks of the valleys and their shepherds may rest na, now waves once more on that soil, in proud asser-in the shade. tion of supremacy. Take the flag that symbolises Consider, next, the wonderful power of life and this movement of the whole world, so venerahle, so resurrection bestowed on the seeds of plants, so beautiful, so bright with memory and hope; pluck it that they may be preserved from year to year, and from the hand of treachery! snatch it from the in- even from century to century. sult of rebel guns! unfurl it! lift it high! carry it forward! forward for the good old cause-the cause of the people! The Marvels of a Seed. Let a child put a few seeds in a draw and shut them up, and sixty years afterwards, when his hair is white and his step tottering, let him take one of these seeds and sow it in the ground, and soon after he will see it spring up into new life, and become a young, fresh, beautiful plant. HAVE you ever considered how wonderful a thing M. Jouannet relates, that, in the year 1835, sevethe seed of a plant is? It is the miracle of mira- ral old Celtic tombs were discovered near Bergocles. God said, "Let there be plants yielding rac. Under the head of each of the dead bodies seed;" and it is further added, each one "after there was found a small, square stone or brick, his kind." with a hole in it, containing a few seeds, which had The great naturalist, Cuvier, thought that the been placed there beside the dead by the heathen germs of all past, present and future generations friends who had buried them, perhaps fifteen hunof seeds were contained one within the other, as if dred or seventeen hundred years before. These packed in a succession of boxes. Other learned seeds were carefully sowed by those who found men have explained this mystery in a different them; and what do you think was seen to spring way. But what signify all their explanations? up from the dust of the dead?-beautiful sunLet them explain it as they will, the wonder re- flowers, blue corn flowers, and clover, bearing mains the same, and we must look upon the repro- blossoms as bright and sweet as those which are duction of the seed as a continual miracle. woven into wreaths by the merry children now playing in our fields. Is there upon earth a machine, is there a palace. is there even a city, which contains so much that is wonderful as is inclosed in a single little seed one grain of corn, one little brown apple-seed, one small seed of a tree, picked up, perhaps, by a sparrow for her little ones, the smallest seed of a poppy or a blue-bell, or even one of the seeds that are so small that they float about in the air, invisible to our eyes? Ah! there is a world of marvel and brilliant beauties hidden in each of these tiny seeds. Consider their immense number, the perfect separation of the different kinds, their power of life and resurrection, and their wonderful fruitfulness! Some years ago, a vase, hermetically sealed, was found in a mummy-pit in Egypt, by the English traveller, Wilkinson, who sent it to the British Museum. The librarian there, having unfortunately broken it, discovered in it a few grains of wheat and one or two peas, old, wrinkled and as hard as stone. The peas were planted carefully under glass on the fourth of June, 1844, and at the end of thirty days these old seeds were seen to spring up into new life. They had been buried, probably, about three thousand years ago, perhaps in the time of Moses, and had slept all that long Consider, first, their number. About a hundred time, apparently dead, yet still living in the dust and fifty years ago, the celebrated Linnæus, who of the tomb.-GAUSSEN. has been called "the father of botany," reckoned about eight thousand different kinds of plants; NOTHING can convey more consolation and supand he then thought that the whole number exist- port to a high-minded, virtuous woman, in the ing could not much exceed ten thousand. But, a midst of sorrow and misfortunes, than the recolhundred years after him, M. de Candolle, of Gene-lection of the conduct of her sex under similar cirva, described forty thousand kinds of plants, and cumstances. When encompassed by dangers, difhe supposed it possible that the number might ficulties or death, women have continued to adeven amount to one hundred thousand. here with fidelity to their husbands' fortunes under Well, let me ask you, have these one hundred every vicissitude. |