expression in the two stories, which like circumstances call out. But anything like plagiarism cannot be charged, or rather the more such plagiarism we have in literature the better.

Only the reading of the story can give an adequate impression of the terrible character of the punishment that Paul endured. The flagellation from Phoebicius, the enraged husband, the prelude is a trifle, but the loss of friendship and honor, exclusion from church privileges, every grade of contumely, provocation to violence that almost becomes murder, worse than all, the lapse through the very woman whom Hermas admired into a moment of passionate desire, and at last condemnation by the bishop in the fight on the fortress to inactivity, where by nature he ought to command, and is actually at first selected by the monks to command, in spite of the ban he is under; all this is a hard price for an act of heroic selfsacrifice. But when Stephen falls from the wall in the deathgrapple with Phoebicius, the words of Paul, "He too has fought, he too has struggled in vain," show how deeply into his heart has entered the iron which his own sins have pointed, and confirm our faith that deep and precious as were to him human sympathies, he was still struggling for something far more costly. Paul's rescue and care of the beautiful fugitive Sirona, his chivalrous devotion to her among the crags and caves of the desert, his conflict with Polycarp in the exercise of this responsibility, and even his lapse into momentary passion, recalled as he is by the memory of Magdalene, deepen our interest in him, if they do not enlarge our sense of the grandeur of his character.

Polycarp is a born artist, and his daily experiences are transmuted into nutrient for art-ideals. Indeed there is nothing more characteristic in the story than the clearness with which the inner voice is heard by the different characters. In Polycarp the call is to art, in Hermas to war, in Paul to self-sacrifice and the attainment of spiritual repose, in Dorothea to the largest exercise of Christian motherhood, in Sirona to a pure love. And here we touch what is at once the excellence and the defect of the book. It is idealistic, thoroughly German. And though one must be thankful for a story in which touches of the idealism of Paul Gerhardt, and

Gottfried von Strassburg are combined, yet there is a sentimentalism that sometimes mars the effect. If Miriam's personality, picturesque and unique as it is, is not rather loosely connected with the main story, Hermas' account of her death and his emotion over it, have a touch of unreality. Sirona's easy conversion to Christianity will possibly grate a little on the reader, but one must remember that in that age there was a chaos of opinion, and Sirona is swayed by impulses of feeling. The leading characters are all extremely good except Phoebicius, and he is very repulsive. Indeed the characters are so ideal that one wonders, to say nothing of Paul's falsity in claiming Hermas' sin, that Hermas himself should stoop to telling Phoebicius lies which do not seem necessary to turn him off the trail of his vanished wife. One reviewer objects to the "obtrusive detail," but that is hardly fair criticism of a story that is so mach freer than most German stories are of superfluous strokes. We are probably safe in believing that the author has studied thoroughly the best French novels, and we can certainly accept. with thankfulness a story that in striking contrast to the metaphysical analyses of our greatest English novelist is a story, and one with a satisfactory ending. Paul dies after it is discovered that he was innocent of that for which he suffered. Sirona, whose husband fell from the wall in the grapple with Stephen, is received into the house of the senator, Peter, and becomes the wife of Polycarp. Hermas becomes the great soldier that his abilities in the fight of the hermits against their marauding enemies foretokened.

There are touches of epic breadth and simplicity scattered through the story. How like Goethe in Hermann and Dorothea is this comparison apropos of words spoken by Polycarp's mother on the fatal night of Hermas' supposed transgression! "Often when angry men threaten like gloomy thunder-clouds to dash against one another, they are kept and forced back as by the blowing of a friendly wind through a word from the lips of an intelligent woman." How significant of the essential difference between man and woman is the conversation between Peter and Dorothea on the day following the intervention by Peter to save Polycarp's statue! These are Peter's concluding words in that interview: "Thou hast done much

good in thy life and given much prudent advice and neither I nor the children nor any one in this place will forget it, but for this that thou art the mother of Polycarp can I promise thee the thanks of the best who are to-day and who shall be in future centuries."

The threads of monastic life were never more pathetically interwoven with those of domestic joys than in these pages. The household of Peter may in its bright domesticity deepen the gloom around the lonely figures of Paul and Stephen, but the woman whom they remember is the justification of their solitariness. There are wrongs that wean from the world and heroisms that exalt above it. The same woman at different periods by differing action produced a similar result in two strong men and caused their renunciation of the world. One can better understand the struggle that prompts the withdrawal, the first incitement to monachism for reading this story. The sheepskin in which Paul and Hermas at first wandered (but which Paul so nobly lost) covered hearts kindred to those of Christians in every age, and the monk in spite of his garb and filth is "of like passions" with us all. The Puritan and the rationalist are apt to forget that. It is good to find this truth once more so concretely stated. It is very good to find the old German root of idealism flourishing in the old soil, still producing fruit of strong, original flavor, that one may say meets the exactions of better trained eyes and more cultivated palates.

Such a story as this the great German writers of the last century prepared the way for, but their age as a whole scarcely foretold its possibility. And this is true not merely of the story, but also of the language. The original is worth reading not alone because it is in that form that we find it, as it came from the author's mind (the translation is not faithful), but because we have in the language the characteristics which Madame de Stael noted in Lessing. It is much more European, more cosmopolitan in style than the average German of the last century or the first half of this. It shows in a marked degree what other writers are here and there evincing, that in the hands of the truly cultured German prose is becoming a facile and transparent vehicle of modern thought.

ARTICLE VI.-GLOOMY VIEWS OF AMERICAN LIFE.

Atlantic Monthly for October, 1878.

Literary Essays by Professor Shedd, 1878.

THE Atlantic's essay upon "Certain Dangerous Tendencies in American Life," and Professor Shedd's "Preface" to his Literary Essays meet at the same sombre point. This coming together of liberal and conservative thought upon an important topic, arrests our attention, and solicits consideration.

The Atlantic essayist starts with two facts, which, as he well says, ought to enter into any fair estimate of our condition, (1) the vast destruction of property by the civil war, and (2) the vast increase of borrowed money to preserve the national life. This should have made us economical. But we became extravagant, acting as if this money was never to be paid, and intoxicated with our plenty, rating our possessions higher than their value. Hence our over-valued real estate, and our mercantile stagnation.

From this he proceeds to the slackening of the moral sense in our new circumstances. And, by consequence, he is led to examine our religious and moral condition, inquiring what equipment we had to meet such emergencies. His account of our tendency away from the moralities of the past, is one of the most elaborate sections of the essay, and has no doubt been read by many with anything but a serene satisfaction,-the essayist having abundant reason for his presentation. From this main point, the essay passes through other dangerous tendencies, such as false views of education; bad legislation; an overplus of culture in the few, and a fatal lack of culture in the many; a tendency to communism; and the vices of our

social life.

Little is gained by an effort to compress a cannon ball, so we let Professor Shedd's weighty words present his own weightier thoughts:

"Twenty years ago, there was among us no formally stated theory like the Epicurean, but there was too much Epicureanism running through society, infusing a debilitating heat, and imparting a hectic flush. But now, the philosophy of

Lucretius is distinctly adopted and defended, and the infidel physics organizes the sensual impulse, and strengthens the sensual bent of the masses. We are not so sound and healthy a people as we were a generation ago. The debilitation is seen in vices that prevail over the whole extent of the land, and mortice themselves into the frame-work of society so firmly that society must be shocked and racked before they can be torn out. It is seen in the amusements of the people, especially in our large cities, which are fast overflowing their limits, and inundating the country with their fashions and spirit. Amusements are an accurate index of the national stamina, and the frivolous, licentious amusements now so common indicate that the American is undergoing an enervating, debauching process, as the cruel gladiatorial amusements of the Roman indicated that he underwent a hardening, brutalizing process. And it is difficult to say which is worst, in the sweep of years, and with reference to the perpetuity of society,— this modern softening of the brain, or that ancient ossification of the heart.

The national decay is seen again in mercantile deceit and breach of trusts, which have become so wide spread as to inspire foreign and domestic capital with alarm; causing a general distrust of both individual and national credit, and producing a general stagnation. It is seen in the venality and profligacy of politics, municipal, state, federal, which has sunk republican government almost to the level of the worst specimens of monarchy in the times of the Second Charles, and the French Regency.

A yet worse feature, perhaps, because it stands in the way of reformation, is found in the dislike of stern recuperative theories generally, and the disposition to dilute truth, and tone down the austere. The intellectuality of the nation has lost a great deal of its early fibre. In theology men shrink from thorough statements, and absolute punishments, as a weak nerve does from the north wind. In philosophy, even professed students avoid all the deeper problems, and all the strict science. In poetry those who read and relish Sophocles, Dante, and Milton, are greatly in the minority. And in art, the lofty, abstract ideal, has well-nigh vanished, so that in much that goes under this name, sense becomes still more sensuous, and flesh still more carnal."

This sounds like the first chapter of Romans. It is, in fact, that same indictment set against the nineteenth century, and its general truth we do not challenge any more than we gainsay Paul on human sinfulness. What we desire is to read beyond the indictment; if possible to get out of the sin abounding into the "grace that doth much more abound." The Christian eye rests upon salvation; and, we think the patriot's eye should not keep itself steadily in the gloom, as if passing evils were permanent facts. Dr. Shedd's preface leads him no farther than to express the need for a thorough treatment of these evils, and to introduce his essays against the present untoward drift. We need not delay, therefore, on his presentation, longer than to welcome these essays as an aid to better thought. They are an aid to all who, like their respected author, prefer thorough