In his ideal picture of a university, he pays a tribute to several living authors. Thus in the morning, far from Babel's dust, TO MY FATHER. My father, I recall the dream Of childish joy and wonder, When thou wast young as I now seem, Say, thirty-three, or under; When on thy temples, as on mine, Time just began to sprinkle His first grey hairs, and traced the sign Of many a coming wrinkle. I recognise thy voice's tone As to myself I'm talking; And this firm tread, how like thine own, In thought, the study walking' As, musing, to and fro I pass, A glance across my shoulder Would bring thine image in the glass, Were it a trifle older. My father, proud am I to bear Thy face, thy form, thy stature, Then for the day that I was born For my complete inheritance THIS ALSO SHALL PASS AWAY. When morning sunbeams round me shed In darkling lines that dim each ray When murky clouds o'erhang the sky, Lo, characters of glory play 'Mid shades: This, too, shall pass away." Blest words, that temper pleasure's beam, And lighten sorrow's gloom, That early sadden youth's bright dream, That world which shall not pass away. O, how shall we sing the ineffable song If the minstrels of Salem could do her such wrong, Let my tongue to the roof of my mouth ever cling, Or if Salem's high glories it choose not to sing, Remember the children of Edom, O Lord, Her ramparts and battlements raze with the sword, O daughter of Babel! thy ruin makes haste; Thy children with famine and misery waste, A SUNDAY-SCHOOL HYMN. The sparrow finds a house, The little bird a nest; Deep in thy dwelling, Lord, they come, And fold their young to rest. And shall we be afraid Our little ones to bring Within thine ancient altar's shade, And underneath thy wing? There guard them as thine eye, There keep them without spot, That when the spoiler passeth by Destruction touch them not. There nerve their souls with might, There nurse them with thy love, There plume them for their final flight To blessedness above. HYMN FOR ADVENT. While the darkness yet hovers, The harbinger star Peeps through and discovers The dawn from afar; To many an aching And watch-wearied eye, i The dayspring is breaking She casts off her sorrows, In thy mercy upon her The blessing of peace. They shall meet thee in gladness TRAVELLER'S HYMN. "In journeyings often." Lord! go with us, and we go Safely through the weariest length, Travelling, if thou will'st it so, In the greatness of thy strength; In the self-controlling car, Flood without, and flood within, . HORACE BUSHNELL. THIS eminent thinker and divine is a native of Connecticut, born about the year 1804, in New Preston, in the town of Washington, Litchfield County. He was, as a boy, employed in a fullingmill in his native village. He became a graduate of Yale in 1827. After this he was engaged for a while as a literary editor of the Journal of Commerce, at New York. He was, from 1829 to 1831, a tutor in Yale College; and, at this time, applied himself to the study of law, and afterwards of theology. In May, 1833. he was called to his present post of ministerial duty, as pastor of the North Congregational Church, in Hartford. He early became a contributor to the Storace Bushnell excess. higher religious periodicals. In 1837, he delivered the Phi Beta Kappa oration at New Haven, On the Principles of National Greatness. His series of theological publications commenced in 1847, with his volume, Views of Christian Nurture, and of Subjects adjacent thereto. In this he presents his views of the spiritual economy of revivals, in which he marks out the philosophical limitations to a system which had been carried to The " Organic Unity of the Family" is another chapter of this work, which shows the author's happy method of surrounding and penetrating a subject. This was followed, in 1849, by his book entitled God in Christ-Three Discourses, delivered at New Haven, Cambridge, and Andover, with a Preliminary Dissertation on Language. The view of the doctrine of the Trinity set forth in this book, met with discussion on all sides, and much opposition from some of the author's Congregational brethren, and was the means of bringing him before the Ministerial Association, with which he is connected. The argument was a metaphysical one, and pursued by Dr. Bushnell with his customary acumen. The main points of defence were presented to the public in 1851, in a new volume, Christ in Theology; being the Answer of the Author before the Hartford Central Association of Ministers, October, 1849, for the Doctrines of the Book entitled God in Christ. As an indication of the material with which Dr. Bushnell has to deal in these discourses, the enumeration of the elements of theological opinion may be cited from the Preface to this volume. "To see brought up," he writes, "in distinct array before us the multitudes of leaders and schools, and theologic wars of only the century past, the Supralapsarians and Sublapsarians; the Arminianizers and the true Calvinists; the Pelagians and Augustinians; the Tasters and the Exercisers; Exercisers by Divine Efficiency and by Human Self-Efficiency; the love-to-being-in-general virtue, the willingto-be-damned virtue, and the love-to-one'sgreatest-happiness virtue; no ability, all ability, and moral and natural ability distinguished; disciples by the new-creating act of Omnipotence, and by change of the governing purpose; atonement by punishment and by expression; limited and general; by imputation and without imputation; Trinitarians of a three-fold distinction, of three psychologic persons, or of three sets of attributes; under a unity of oneness, or of necessary agreement, or of society and deliberative council;-nothing, I think, would more certainly disenchant us of our confidence in systematic orthodoxy and the possibility, in human language, of an exact theologic science, than an exposition so practical and serious, and withal so indisputably mournful, so mournfully indisputable.” The remaining theological writings of Dr. Bush nell are included in his contributions to the Reviews.* In another department of composition, that of the philosophical essay, mingling subtle and refined speculation with the affairs of every-day life, he has achieved distinguished success, in & manner peculiarly his own. With this class of his writings may be included a review of Brigham's Influence of Religion on Health in the Christian Spectator (viii. 51); an article on Taste and Fashion, in the New Englander, 1843; a Discourse before the Alumni of Yale College, 1843, on The Moral Tendencies and Results of Human History; an address before the Hartford County Agricultural Society, 1846; Work and Play, an oration before the Phi Beta Kappa, at Cambridge, 1848 and several special sermons, which have been printed, entitled Unconscious Influence; the Day of Roads-tracing the progress of civilization by the great national highways; a similar discourse, The Northern Iron; Barbarism the First Danger, in allusion to emigration; Religious Music; and Politics under the Law of God. In 1849, Dr. Bushnell pronounced an oration, The Fathers of New England, before the New England Society of New York; and, in 1851, Speech for Connecticut, being an Historical Estimate of the State, delivered before, and printed by, the Legislature. PLAY, A LIFE OF FREEDOM.† Thus it is that work prepares the state of play. Passing over now to this latter, observe the intense longing of the race for some such higher and freer state of being. They call it by no name. Probably most of them have but dimly conceived what they are after. The more evident will it be that they are after this, when we find them covering over the whole ground of life, and filling up the contents of history, with their counterfeits or misconceived attempts. If the hidden fire is seen bursting up on every side, to vent itself in flame, we may certainly know that the ground is full. Let it not surprise you, if I name, as a first illustration here, the general devotion of our race to money. This passion for money is allowed to be a sordid passion-one that is rankest in the least generous and most selfish of mankind; and yet a conviction has always been felt, that it must have its heat in the most central fires and divinest affinities of our nature. Thus, the poet calls it the auri sacra fames,-sacra, as being a curse, and that in the divine life of the race. Childhood being passed, and the play-fund of motion so far spent that running on foot no longer appears to be the joy it was, the older child, now called a man, fancies that it will make him happy to ride! Or he imagines, which is much the same, some loftier state of being, -call it rest, retirement, competence, independence, -no matter by what name, only be it a condition of use, ease, liberty, and pure enjoyment. And so we find the whole race at work to get rid of work; drudging themselves to-day, in the hope of play tomorrow. This is that sacra fames, which, miscon ceiving its own unutterable longings after spiritual play, proposes to itself the dull felicity of cessation, and drives the world to madness in pursuit of a counterfeit, which it is work to obtain, work also to keep, and yet harder work oftentimes to enjoy. Here, too, is the secret of that profound passion for the drama, which has been so conspicuous in the cultivated nations. We love to see life in its feel ing and activity, separated from its labors and historic results. Could we see all human changes transpire poetically or creatively, that is, in play, letting our soul play with them as they pass, then it were only poetry to live. Then to admire, love, laugh, then to abhor, pity, weep,-all were alike grateful to us; for the view of suffering separated from all reality, save what it has to feeling, only yields a painful joy, which is the deeper joy because of the pain. Hence the written drama, offering to view in its impersonations a life one side of life, a life in which all the actings appear without the ends and simply as in play, becomes to the cultivated reader a spring of the intensest and most captivating spiritual incitement. He beholds the creative genius of a man playing out impersonated groups and societies of men, clothing each with life, passion, individuality, and character, by the fertile activity of his own inspired feeling. Meantime the writer himself is hidden, and cannot even suggest his existence. Hence egotism, which also is a form of work, the dullest, most insipid, least inspiring of all human demonstrations, is nowhere allowed to obtrude itself. As a reader, too, he has no ends to think of or to fear,-nothing to do, but to play the characters into his feeling as creatures existing for his sake. In this view, the drama, as a product of genius, is, within a certain narrow limit, the realization of play. But far less effectively, or more faintly, when it is acted. Then the counterfeit, as it is more remote, is more feeble. In the reading we invent our own sceneries, clothe into form and expression each one of the characters, and play out our own liberty in them as freely, and sometimes as divinely, as they. Whatever reader, therefore, has a soul of true life and fire within him, finds all expectation balked, when he becomes an auditor and spectator. The scenery is tawdry and flat, the characters, definitely measured, have lost their infinity, so to speak, and thus their freedom, and what before was play descends to nothing better or more inspired than work. It is called going to the play, but it should rather be called going to the work, that is, to see a play worked, (yes, an opera! that is it!)— men and women inspired through their memory, and acting their inspirations by rote, panting into love, pumping at the fountains of grief, whipping out the passions into fury, and dying to fulfil the contract of the evening, by a forced holding of the breath. And yet this feeble counterfeit of play, which some of us would call only "very tragical mirth," has a power to the multitude. They are moved, thrilled it may be, with a strange delight. It is as if a something in their nature, higher than they themselves know, were quickened into power, -namely, that divine instinct of play, in which the summit of our nature is most clearly revealed. In like manner, the passion of our race for war, and the eager admiration yielded to warlike exploits, are resolvable principally into the same fundamental cause. Mere ends and uses do not satisfy us. We must get above prudence and economy, into something that partakes of inspiration, be the cost what it may. Hence war, another and yet more magnificent counterfeit of play. Thus there is a great and lofty virtue that we call courage (cour-age), taking our name from the heart. It is the greatness of a great heart, the repose and confidence of a man whose soul is rested in truth and principle. Such a man has no ends ulterior to his duty,-duty itself is his end. He is in it therefore as in play, lives it as an inspiration. Lifted thus out of mere prudence and contrivance, he is also lifted above fear. Life to him is the outgoing of his great heart (heart-age), action from the heart. And because he now can die, without being shaken or perturbed by any of the dastardly feelings that belong to self-seeking and work, because he partakes of the impassibility of his principles, we call him a hero, regarding him as a kind of god, a man who has gone up into the sphere of the divine. Then, since courage is a joy so high, a virtue of so great majesty, what could happen but that many will covet both the internal exaltation and the outward repute of it? Thus comes bravery, which is the counterfeit, or mock virtue. Courage is of the heart, as we have said; bravery is of the will. One is the spontaneous joy and repose of a truly great soul; the other, bravery, is after an end ulterior to itself, and, in that view, is but a form of work,about the hardest work, too, I fancy, that some men undertake. What can be harder, in fact, than to act a great heart, when one has nothing but a will wherewith to do it? Thus you will see that courage is above danger, bravery in it, doing battle on a level with it. One is secure and tranquil, the other suppresses agitation or conceals it. A right mind fortifies one, shame stimulates the other. Faith is the nerve of one, risk the plague and tremor of the other. For if I may tell you just here a very important secret, there be many that are called heroes who are yet without courage. They brave danger by their will, when their heart trembles. They make up in violence what they want in tranquillity, and drown the tumult of their fears in the rage of their passions. Enter the heart and you shall find, too often, a dastard spirit lurking in your hero. Call him still a brave man, if you will, only remember that he lacks courage. No, the true hero is the great, wise man of duty, -he whose soul is armed by truth and supported by the smile of God,-he who meets life's perils with a cautious but tranquil spirit, gathers strength by facing its storms, and dies, if he is called to die, as a Christian victor at the post of duty. And if we must have heroes, and wars wherein to make them, there is no so brilliant war as a war with wrong, no hero so fit to be sung as he who has gained the bloodless victory of truth and mercy. But if bravery be not the same as courage, still it is a very imposing and plausible counterfeit. The man himself is told, after the occasion is past, how heroically he bore himself, and when once his nerves have become tranquillized, he begins even to believe it. And since we cannot stay content in the dull, uninspired world of economy and work, we are as ready to see a hero as he to be one. Nay, we must have our heroes, as I just said, and we are ready to harness ourselves, by the million, to any man who will let us fight him out the name. Thus we find out occasions for war,-wrongs to be redressed, revenges to be taken, such as we may feign inspiration and play the great heart under. We collect armies, and dress up leaders in gold and high colors, meaning, by the brave look, to inspire some notion of a hero beforehand. Then we set the men in phalanxes and squadrons, where the personality itself is taken away, and a vast impersonal person called an army, a magnanimous and brave monster, is all that remains. The masses of fierce color, the glitter of steel, the dancing plumes, the waving flags, the deep throb of the music lifting every foot,-under these the living acres of men, possessed by the one thought of playing brave today, are rolled on to battle. Thunder, fire, dust, blood, groans,-what of these?-nobody thinks of these, for nobody dares to think till the day is over, and then the world rejoices to behold a new batch of heroes! And this is the devil's play, that we call war. We have had it going on ever since the old geologic era was finished. We are sick enough of the matter of it. We understand well enough that it is not good economy. But we cannot live on work. We must have courage, inspiration, greatness, play. Even the moral of our nature, that which is to weave us into social union with our kind before God, is itself thirsting after play; and if we cannot have it in good, why then let us have it in as good as we can. It is at least some comfort, that we do not mean quite as badly in these wars as some men say. We are not in love with murder, we are not simple tigers in feeling, and some of us come out of battle with kind and gentle qualities left. We only must have our play. Note also this, that, since the metaphysics of fighting have been investigated, we have learned to make much of what we call the moral of the army; by which we mean the feeling that wants to play brave. Only it is a little sad to remember that this same moral, as it is called, is the true, eternal, moral nature of the man thus terribly perverted,—that which was designed to link him to his God and his kind, and ought to be the spring of his immortal inspirations. There has been much of speculation among the learned concerning the origin of chivalry; nor has it always been clear to what human elements this singular institution is to be referred. But when we look on man, not as a creature of mere understanding and reason, but as a creature also of play, essentially a poet in that which constitutes his higher life, we seem to have a solution of the origin of chivalry, which is sufficient, whether it be true or In the forswearing of labor, in the brave adventures of a life in arms, in the intense ideal devotion to woman as her protector and avenger, in the self-renouncing and almost self-oblivious worship of honor,-what do we see in these but the mock moral doings of a creature who is to escape self-love and the service of ends in a free, spontaneous life of goodness, in whom courage, delicacy, honor, disinterested deeds, are themselves to be the inspiration, as they are the end, of his being? not. I might also show, passing into the sphere of religion, how legal obedience, which is work, always descends into superstition, and thus that religion must, in its very nature and life, be a form of play, -a worship offered, a devotion paid, not for some ulterior end, but as being its own end and joy. I might also show, in the same manner, that all the enthusiastic, fanatical, and properly quietistic modes of religion are as many distinct counterfeits, and, in that manner, illustrations of my subject. But this you will see at a glance, without illustration. Only observe how vast a field our illustrations cover. the infatuated zeal of our race for the acquisition of money, in the drama, in war, in chivalry, in perverted religion,-in all these forms, covering almost the whole ground of humanity with counterfeits of play, that are themselves the deepest movements of the race, I show you the boundless sweep of this divine instinct, and how surely we may know that the perfected state of man is a state of beauty, truth. and love, where life is its own end and joy. In GEORGE DENISON PRENTICE, THE editor of the Louisville Journal, is a native of Connecticut, born at Preston, New London county, December 18, 1802. He was educated at Brown University, studied law but did not engage in the profession, preferring the pursuits of editorial life. In 1828 he commenced the New England Weekly Review at Hartford, a well conducted and well supported journal of a literary character, which he carried on for two years, when, resigning its management to Mr. Whittier, he removed to the West,established himself in Kentucky at Louisville, and shortly became editor of the "Journal," a daily paper in that city, In his hands it has become one of the most widely known and esteemed newspapers in the country; distinguished by its fidelity to Whig politics, and its earnest, able editorials, no less than by the lighter skirmishing of wit and satire. The "Prenticeiana" of the editor are famous. If collected and published with appropriate notes these mots would form an amusing and instructive commentary on the management of elections, newspaper literature, and political oratory, of permanent value as a memorial of the times. The Louisville Journal has always been a supporter of the cause of education and of the literary interest in the West. It has hence become, in accordance with the known tastes of the editor, a favorite avenue of young poets to the public. Several of the most successful lady writers of the West have first become known through their contributions to the "Journal." Mr. Prentice's own poetical writings are numerous. Many of them first appeared in the author's "Review" at Hartford. A number have been collected by Mr. Everest in the "Poets of Connecticut." They are in a serious vein, chiefly expressions of sentiment and the domestic affections. Our specimen is taken from Mr. Gallagher's "Selections from the Poetical Literature of the West." Its atmosphere of roses-its white clouds Like banners from the battlements of Heaven- Nor have they gone alone. High human hearts The woven sounds of breeze, and bird, and stream, Yet, why muse Upon the past with sorrow? Though the year |