he details of government, and of the clergyman to
keep an eye on private morals, including his own. There will also be
social and religious changes, perhaps great ones; but there are no omens
of any very fierce upheaval. And seeing the educational value to this
generation of the reforms for which it has contended, and especially of
the antislavery enterprise, one must feel an impulse of pity for our
successors, who seem likely to have no convictions that they can
honestly be mobbed for.

Can we spare these great tonics? It is the experience of history that
all religious bodies are purified by persecution, and materialized by
peace. No amount of accumulated virtue has thus far saved the merely
devout communities from deteriorating, when let alone, into
comfort and good dinners. This is most noticeable in detached
organizations,--Moravians, Shakers, Quakers, Roman Catholics,--they all
go the same way at last; when persecution and missionary toil are over,
they enter on a tiresome millennium of meat and pudding. To guard
against this spiritual obesity, this carnal Eden, what has the next age
in reserve for us? Suppose forty million perfectly healthy and virtuous
Americans, what is to keep them from being as uninteresting as so many
Chinese?

I know of nothing but that aim which is the climax and flower of all
civilization, without which purity itself grows dull and devotion
tedious,--the pursuit of Science and Art. Give to all this nation peace,
freedom, prosperity, and even virtue, still there must be some absorbing
interest, some career. That career can be sought only in two
directions,--more and yet more material prosperity on the one side.
Science and Art on the other. Every man's aim must either be riches, or
something better than riches. Now the wealth is to be respected and
desired, nor need anything be said against it. And certainly nothing
need be said in its behalf, there is such a vast chorus of voices
steadily occupied in proclaiming it. The Instincts of the American mind
will take care of that; but to advocate the alternative career, the
striving of the whole nature after something utterly apart from this
world's wealth,--it is for this end that a stray voice is needed. It
will not take long; the clamor of the market will re-absorb us
to-morrow.

It can scarcely be said that Science and Art have as yet any place in
America; or if they have, it is by virtue of their prospective value, as
with the bonds of a