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have it in common, that they are altogether greedy of gain, and to that end risk both life and virtue. It is among their singularities, that they are excited to astonishment or laughter, if one works for another without a remuneration, or sacrifices his property (or goods) to the commonwealth. They talk a great deal

of noble sentiments and magnanimous conduct, but these are only manifested, without being derided, on the stage. But the inhabitants of Thule quite resemble the actors, and they have great dexterity in the art of making anything appear other than it is. No one speaks freely to another what he thinks. For that reason, they call the knowledge of men, the most difficult art, and prudence, the highest wisdom.

"Meanwhile, they cannot conceal them selves so that their knavery or awkwardness shall not be detected. For while they live in perpetual contradiction to human reason, teaching one thing and doing another, feeling one thing and saying another, and often choosing the most repugnant means for the accomplishment of their ends, their unskilfulness is made manifest. In order to encourage agriculture, they burden the farmer with the heaviest taxes and the greatest neglect; to stimulate intercourse and trade, they institute innumerable custom-houses and prohibitions; that they may furnish and improve fallible men, they shut them up together in a public prison, where they reciprocally poison each other with vices still worse, and from which they return accomplished rogues to the society of men; to cherish the healths of their bodies, they subvert the order of life; some are awake during the night, and others sleep away the day; others destroy the energy of their bodies by hot drinks and spices, which they buy in large amounts in the Indies, so that hardly a poor household is to be found which satisfies itself with the products of its own fields or flocks, without adding the drinks of Arabia, the spices of the Indies, and the fishes

of the most distant seas."

THE EFFECT OF THE FRAGMENT OF PYTHIAS.

Here Olivier finished reading. He looked towards me with inquisitive eyes.

Laughing, I said, "One must grant, the tone of it is well kept up. Doubtless, one of the old wise men of Greece would have spoken just so of the bar

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Olivier interrupted me with peals of laughter and exclaimed, "Oh child of the eighteenth century, who always gropest about the shell of a thing and forgettest the kernel, who always hast to do with the appearance and not with the essence, dost thou not see and hear that thou art thyself a citizen of Thule ? What! Asia? No, a wise man of ancient Greece would have spoken thus of us Europeans, if he could have seen us in his day!"

didst not suffer me to finish. I will "Thou art right, Olivier; but thou still add, that there is in this fragment the manner of the Lettres Persannes, The account relates to us. Its exquisite truth cannot be mistaken."

"I grant thee but half, thou judge of men. Not so; dost thou consider the art of the author, whether he has hit the truth? Or thinkest thou that the truth has struck thee?"

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'Both! but thou said'st before that it made a painful impression on thee; thou didst lie with this book in the shade of a maple. Tell more!"

Well, there lay I. When I had read the fragment, I threw the book from me, reclined my head back upon the grass, stared up into the dark blue of the eternal heavens-up into the deep of the shoreless universe, and thought of God, the all-perfect-all imbued with Love and Glory-of the eternity of my being; and in this moment of elevated conception, understood much better many words of Christ-of him the Revealer of the divine relations of our spirit. In my father's house there are many mansions,' or, unless you become as little children,' &c. Whoever will be my disciple, let him deny the foolishness of this world, and take up my cross willingly.' And I never saw the divinity of Christ more clearly than then. I thought of the degeneracy of men, who from century to century have wandered further from the truth, simplicity, and happiness of Nature, to a brutal, sensual, foolish and painful life. I flew back in thought to the dawn of time, to the earliest

people, to the simple wisdom of the lofty ancients. I sighed, the tears came into my eyes. I was again in my fancy a child of God. Wherefore can I not feel truly, think truly, speak truly, act truly, as did Jesus Christ? Can I not break the chains of custom? What but stupid timidity hinders me from being a reasonable godly man, among delirious and perverse barbarians? I said this. În my imagination I was one already. I closed my eyes. I felt an unspeakable happiness in being free from the tormenting sensuality of the world, again to be reconciled, and at one with God, Nature, the Universe, and Eternity. So I lay a long while; then, as I opened my eyes, the sun had gone down, and the glow of evening suffused and gilded all things."

"I recognize this holy state," exclaimed the Baroness.

"Then I rose up in order to return to the city," continued Olivier; "I discovered my uniform-it went through me like a flash. Loathsome lay the world in all its foolishness, in all its nonsense before me; never had I seen more clearly than in that moment, the frightful departure of mankind from the Eternal, the True, and the Holy. I perceived how Socrates, had he lived at this day, would once more have been obliged to drink the poisoned cup; that Christ would have found in every city another Jerusalem-would have been led to the cross by Christian sects unanimously, and would have been condemned by princes as an Enemy to the good old ways, as a Seducer of the people, as an Enthusiast. I shuddered. Then I asked myself on the way, 'Hast thou courage? A firm resolution seized me. I answered with a loud voice, I have courage. It shall be. I will live rationally, come what inay!'

"The next morning, after I had a bracing sleep, and quite forgotten all that I had thought of the previous evening, this book again came under my eyes.

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I remembered my determination. I saw the perilousness of my daring. I wavered. Still I was compelled to acknowledge the truth of my yesterday's conviction. Whoever would be my disciple, must forsake all,' &c. 1 thought over my domestic and public relations. The rich young man in the gospel, who seemed sorrowful at the words of Christ, occurred to me. Then I asked myself again, Hast thou courage?' And with a louder voice answered, 'I will have it.' And so I determined from that hour to live rationally, in the least, as well as in the greatest things. The first step taken, the scorn of the world is not thought of, and each subsequent step becomes easier."

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"I tremble for thee, thou noble enthusiast," cried I, grasping his hand; "but wilt thou not tell me the issue of thy daring?"

"Wherefore not? But such things must take place in the open air, under the broad sky, beneath the trees, in sight of the wide waving sea," said Olivier; "for, dear Norbert, in a room, between walls and partitions, many things seem rational, which, in open Nature, where the soul loses itself in the broad pure all, appear quite fanciful and dreamlike. And we find outdoors, in the presence of God's creation, where the Eternal and the True stand for ever, that many things are perfectly right, which, between the walls of a dwellinghouse full of conventionalities, or within the walls of a philosophical lectureroom, an audience-chamber, a dancing saloon, or a gorgeous parlour, appear as an extravagant silliness, an enthusiasm, or idiotcy. Come, then, into the open air!"

He took me by the arm. The Baroness went to her children. Olivier led me through the garden to a little hill, where we reclined in the shadow of a wall. Above us, in the broad atmosphere, swung the tender branches of the birch: below us rolled the sparkling waves of the eternal ocean.

(To be concluded in our next.)

ALBERT BRISBANE

Is a remarkable and interesting man; and however little he may be appreciated or understood by those who will not approach him within reach of sympathy or comprehension, his name is well worthy the notice we are glad of an opportunity here to bestow upon it. He is now somewhat extensively known, as the leading advocate in this country of the doctrine or system of FOURIER, which proposes a re-organization of society, on principles assumed to be sufficient to add pleasure and dignity to every species of industry; to secure abundance, happiness, and harmony to the entire mass of the human race; to banish at least nine-tenths of all the wretchedness, degradation, and crime, which now everywhere afflict the earth; and to bring forth out of the unfathomed capabilities of the moral, mental, and physical nature of man, a full realization of its highest possibility for goodness and greatness, and the full development of the destiny for which it was adapted and designed, by a Creator, all-loving, all-powerful, and all-wise.

We thus state in broad general terms the scope and the hope of Fourierism, that the reader may understand the nature and the force of that peculiar enthusiasm by which Mr. Brisbane is characterized in a degree superior to any individual we have ever encountered, a degree which constantly leads some of his friends who have no faith nor interest in his views, to impute to him an amiable, while highly intellectual insanity. He is yet a young man, about thirty-two years old, and a native of Batavia, in the State of New York; though the greater part of his life, since the attainment of manhood, has been spent, either in studies at the European universities and capitals, or in travel over almost every portion of that continent, including Turkey, from which his rambles extended also into Asia Minor. He is a well and highly educated man, of active and vigorous mind, with a keen analytical vision, and a large power of generalization. With a great deal of candor, good

temper, and kindliness, he exhibits a certain innocent simplicity of character, and a fervor of faith in abstract convictions, which can rarely fail to awaken in a high degree the confidence, interest, and esteem of those who are brought into any intimacy of intercourse with him. Looking abroad with a far ranging eye, and a heart of large and loving sympathy, over the boundless expanse of suffering and wrong which may be said to constitute the present life of the human race on the earth, he is thoroughly imbued with the conviction that all this need not be-ought not to be-was not designed by God for ever to be,—and that the new philosophy of "Association and Attractive Industry," as taught by Fourier, contains a full and perfect remedy for it all,-if men could but be brought to open their ears to listen to it, their minds to understand it, and their hearts to sympathize in it. Thus believing, thus feeling, it will not excite the surprise of any whose characters are not yet wholly petrified by the selfishness which seems the very essence of our present system of civilisation, that he should be animated with a deep, intense, and all-absorbing enthusiasm in behalf of this doctrine and cause. His whole life is devoted to it, with an untiring industry, an unflagging ardor, rarely indeed accorded to any pursuit of mere abstract truth and disinterested philanthropy. In moderate circumstances, though beyond the necessity of labor for bread, he scorns with a generous contempt to waste a thought, or to raise a finger, for the prosecution of any form of business which, for the acquisition of a selfish individual wealth, should divide his time or talents with his present higher and holier mission of usefulness to his kind, as he regards it. To this his whole life is devoted, his every thought, act-we had almost said his every word-seeming to have some reference, more or less direct, to its leading ideas, and to his great end and aim, that of propagating them as widely and establishing them as firmly in the minds of

men, as it may be possible to him within his allotted reach of ability and span of time. Yet if thus possessed with all the zeal and singleness of purpose of a fanaticism, he is singularly free from its fierceness, and even from its intolerance. It is true that, though rather a modest and self-distrustful man, he yet looks down, from the assumed elevation of his truth and his cause, with a contempt the most ineffable on all the minor questions, as he regards them, which for ever divide and convulse society, in all its struggles of politics, religion, and philosophy. But whether it proceeds from the native tendency of a good and kindly heart, or from that habit of mind favored by his own perpetual preaching, which teaches him to ascribe all that is wrong in the characters and conduct of men chiefly to the organization of their present societycertain the result is, whether from the one cause or the other, that he is usually found tolerant and patient of dissent, and even of antipathy, to a degree rarely met with, even in men of less intense convictions and less fervent feeling. Fully conscious, moreover, that he is looked upon, by all the cold and careless "common sense" of society, as a visionary more than half insane in the "fond folly" of his philanthropy, though he feels this at times oppressively, and even sadly, yet he never suffers it either to dim his own faith, to dampen his ardor, or to discourage his labors, instant in season and out of season, and through every mode and channel of action he can find. Now, right or wrong, there is in all this a moral bravery, fortitude, and faith, which are noble in themselves, and which are entitled in a high degree to respect and sympathy. Of the truth of the doc

trine to which he is thus devoted, we have nothing to say-having never yet bestowed upon its deeper metaphysics that consideration necessary to the formation of a judgment on a problem at the same time so vast and so varied. We have, indeed, not a few points of opinion in common with it, and look upon its discussion and its progress with an interest proportioned to the magnitude of the existing Evil it aims to overthrow, and of the possible Good it professes to be able to erect in its stead. We have, therefore, cheerfully, in some former Numbers, opened the pages of this Review to Mr. Brisbane, to enable him to lay before its readers, over his own name, and on his own responsibility, such an exposition as those limits would permit of his theory and object.* For many, these articles have probably had but little attraction. Others, however, we doubt not, whether convinced or not by his pleading for his cause, will have looked upon it with some interest, as being at least one of the most imposing of the manifestations of the very evident tendency of the age towards a social reconstruction, on the basis of the idea of voluntary Association. Those manifestations are to be seen by the observant eye in many directions, and in many aspects. How many projects of this kind do we not see brought forward, with a most earnest confidence on the part of their advocates,-how many do we not see applied to practice, on limited scales, indeed, and often in combination with false principles, necessarily fatal to success; yet still generally attended with a partial success, affording great encouragement to perseverance, at the same time that it remains easy to refer their respective

⚫ It is proper to state that Mr. Brisbane prepared a fifth article, designed as a conclusion to the series already published. This article, in accordance with an intimation given in the former ones, contained a detailed practical statement of the organization of one of the proposed Associations. But the former articles having been contained within the Tenth Volume, which closed with our June Number-and the fifth one, here referred to as having been prepared, being of very inconvenient length, it has been thought proper not to insert it, the conclusion of a past series, in the new volume, which commenced in July with a general change of typographical style and arrangements. Its insertion was, therefore, declined, with the assent of the author -in justice to whom this explanation of its non-appearance is due. Mr. Brisbane has announced in the papers his intention to issue shortly a semi-monthly Magazine, specially devoted to this subject, in which the article in question will, of course, find a place; and in which it shall be sent to any of the subscribers to the Democratic Review who, having read the former ones, may signify a desire to receive it.

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degrees of failure to those defects of organization, which thus become useful warnings for avoidance in future still progressive experiments. The mind of the age, dissatisfied with the present results of all its boasted civilisation, seems to be groping anxiously forward in this direction. Fourierism is one of these gropings,-whether it has, as it claims, found and seized the true clue which is to guide society upward again out of the present labyrinthine gloom and perplexity, to the light and air of freedom and happiness, it is not for us, it is not for any, yet to pronounce. It is making a remarkable progress in the favor of public opinion in France and England, as well as in this country; and we are assured that it numbers among the converts it acquires many entitled to high respect in every point of view, both of intelligence, education, and social position. Preparations are already far advanced for a practical experiment of it, under the auspices of a gentleman of great wealth in France, Arthur Young (a grandson of Arthur Young the agriculturist), who has purchased for the purpose a large estate and spacious mansion, called Citeaux, the ancient princely residence of the Abbés of Citeaux, built in 1772, by the architect Lenoir, near Dijon, in the province of Burgundy; and who has thus far, as we are informed, invested in the enterprise an amount not less than about six hundred thousand dollars. The progress and results of this experiment we shall not fail to observe with deep interest.

It should not be forgotten that Fourierism, notwithstanding the French origin which in the minds of many would doubtless be calculated to excite a prejudice against it, lays claim to an eminently Christian character. "The Bible and the Book of Nature are the standard of our faith. The Universal Word and Work of God, and universal unity in Christ, is our religious doctrine,"such is its own profession, as we find it inscribed on the front of its organ in England, the "London Phalanx Magazine." Repudiating the error of a community of property, which (together with other defects and vicious principles) has been the bane of other social schemes of a similar general object, it attaches a cardinal

importance to the idea of distinct individual property and acquisition. It avows its reverence for the marriage tie, and for all the precious charities and sanctities of the domestic relations; and claims to be protective, rather than destructive, of the allessential principle of the complete freedom and development of the individual man. And at the same time that it comes as a gospel of proffered temporal salvation and moral amelioration to the poor, it addresses itself equally to the rich, with words of invitation to a state of improved wellbeing, physical and moral, which it declares to be totally inaccessible, even with all their outward advantages, in the present false and discordant state of society. Such are its pretensions. How well they may be founded, can only be judged by those who may have made themselves fully masters of its philosophy,-how well they may be verified in practice, can only be known by the result of experiments yet to be tested. But it has a right, meanwhile, at least to fair play, and a candid hearing, and such advocates of it as the gentleman whose name is prefixed to these remarks are eminently entitled to personal respect and sympathy. It may be all a fallacy, but it is at least an honest and a generous one; while, if a truth, it is the grandest, noblest, and best that mere human intellect has ever yet bestowed upon the world. And when we reflect upon all the wretchedness which now seems to make the very atmosphere of our globe an atmosphere of sighs-the utter antagonism of the selfish spirit of our present civilisation to that of Christianity-and the infinite distance at which all human society now is from anything resembling that millennial state of good and happiness promised by the Bible, as the destined result and reward of its principles-when we reflect upon all this, and then behold any new scheme or theory of social reorganization, proffering such pretensions as we have above ascribed to this, we cannot but bid its disciples a most earnest God-speed, and at least indulge the imagination with the hope that it may prove indeed to be a living Truth.

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