the master of the house. A rich and vulgar man once sported a coach and four, and at its first turn-out rode into the great commercial street of a large town in New England. "How fine you must feel with your new coach and four," said one of his old friends, though not quite so rich. "Yes," was the reply, "as fine as a beetle in a gold snuff-box." All of his kindred are not so nice and discriminating in their self-consciousness.

This practical materialism is a great affliction to us. We think a man cannot be poor and great also. So we see a great man sell himself for a little money, and it is thought "a good operation." A conspicuous man, in praise of a certain painter, summed up his judgment with this: "Why, sir, he has made twenty thousand dollars by his pictures." "A good deal more than Michael Angelo, Leonardo, and Raphael together," might have been the reply. But 't is easier to weigh purses than artistic skill. It was a characteristic praise bestowed in Boston on a distinguished American writer, that his book brought him more money than any man had ever realized for an original work in this country. "Commerce," said Mr. Pitt, "having got into both houses of Parliament, privilege must be done away," the privilege of wit and genius, not less than rank. Clergymen estimate their own and their brothers' importance, not by their apostolical gifts, or even apostolic succession, but by the value of the living.

All other nations have this same fault, it may be said. But there is this difference: in other nations the things of a man are put before the man himself; so a materialism which exalts the accidents of the man-rank, wealth, birth, and the like -above the man, is not inconsistent with the general Idea of England or Austria. In America it is a contradiction. Besides, in most civilized countries, there is a class of men living on inherited wealth, who devote their lives to politics, art, science, letters, and so are above the mere material elegance which surrounds them. That class has often inflicted a deep wound on society, which festers long and leads to serious trouble in the system, but at the same time it redeems a nation from the reproach of mere material vulgarity; it has been the source of refinement, and has warmed into life much of the wisdom and beauty which have thence spread over all the world. In America there is no such class. Young men inheriting wealth very rarely turn to any thing so noble; they either convert their talents into gold, or their gold into furniture,

wines, and confectionary. A young man of wealth does not know what to do with himself or it; a rich young woman seems to have no resource but marriage! Yet it must be confessed, that at least in one part of the United States wealth flows freely for the support of public institutions of Education.

Here it is difficult for a man of science to live by his thought. Was Bowditch one of the first mathematicians of his age? He must be at the head of an annuity office. If Socrates should set up as a dealer in money, and outwit the Brokers as formerly the Sophists, and shave notes as skilfully as of old, we should think him a great man. But if he adopted his old plan, what should we say of him?

Manliness is postponed and wealth preferred. "What a fine house is this," one often says; "what furniture; what feasting. But the master of the house!-why every stone out of the wall laughs at him. He spent all of himself in getting this pretty show together, and now it is empty, and mocks its owner. He is the emblematic coffin at the Egyptian feast." "Oh, man!" says the looker on, "why not furnish thyself with a mind, and conscience, a heart and a soul, before getting all this brass and mahogany together; this beef and these wines." The poor wight would answer, Why, sir, there were none such in the market!"— The young man does not say, "I will first of all things be a man, and so being will have this thing and the other," putting the agreeable after the essential. But he says, "first of all, by hook or by crook, I will have money, the manhood may take care of itself." He has it, for tough and hard as the old world is, it is somewhat fluid before a strong man who resolutely grapples with difficulty and will swim through; it can be made to serve his turn. He has money, but the man has evaporated in the process; when you look he is not there. True, other nations have done the same thing, and we only repeat their experiment. The old Devil of Conformity says to our American Adam and Eve," do this and you shall be as Gods," a promise as likely to hold good as the Devil's did in the beginning. A man was meant for something more than a tassel to a large estate, and a woman to be more than a rich housekeeper.

With this offensive materialism we copy the vices of feudal aristocracy abroad, making our vulgarity still more ridiculous. We are ambitious or proud of wealth, which is but labor stored up, and at the same time are ashamed of labor, which is wealth in process. With all our talk about Democracy, labor

is thought less honorable in Boston than in Berlin and Leipsic. Thriving men are afraid their children will be shoemakers, or ply some other honorable and useful craft. Yet little pains are taken to elevate the condition or improve the manners and morals of those who do all the manual work of society. The strong man takes care that his children and himself escape that condition. We do not believe that all stations are alike honorable if honorably filled; we have little desire to equalize the burthens of life, so that there shall be no degraded class; none cursed with work, none with idleness. It is popular to endow a college; vulgar to take an interest in common schools. Liberty is a fact, Equality a word, and Fraternity—we do not think of yet.

In this struggle for material wealth and the social rank which is based thereon, it is amusing to see the shifting of the scenes; the social aspirations of one and the contempt with which another rebuts the aspirant. An old man can remember when the most exclusive of men, and the most golden, had scarce a penny in their purse, and grumbled at not finding a place where they would. Now the successful man is ashamed of the steps he rose by. The gentleman who came to Boston half a century ago, with all his worldly goods tied up in a cotton handkerchief, and that not of so large a pattern as are made now-a-days, is ashamed to recollect that his father was a Currier, or a Blacksmith, or a Skipper at Barnstable or Beverly; ashamed, also, of his forty or fifty country cousins, remarkable for nothing but their large hands and their excellent memory. Nay, he is ashamed of his own humble beginnings, and sneers at men starting as he once started. The generation of English "Snobs" came in with the Conqueror, and migrated to America at an early day, where they continue to thrive marvellously the chief "conservative party" in the land.

Through this contempt for labor a certain affectation runs through a good deal of American society, and makes our aristocracy vulgar and contemptible. What if Burns had been ashamed of his plough, and Franklin had lost his recollection of the candle-moulds and the composing-stick? Mr. Chubbs, who got rich to-day, imitates Mr. Swipes, who got rich yester day, buys the same furniture, gives similar entertainments, and counts himself "as good a man as Swipes, any day." Nay, he goes a little beyond him, puts his servants in livery, with the Chubbs arms on the button; but the new-found family arms are not descriptive of the character of the Chubbses, or

of their origin and history-only of their vanity. Then Mr. Swipes looks down on poor Chubbs, and curls his lip with scorn; calls him a "parvenu," parvenu," "an upstart," "a plebeian," speaks of him as one of "that sort of people," "one of your ordinary men;" "thrifty and well off in the world, but a little vulgar." At the same time Mr. Swipes looks up to Mr. Bung, who got rich the day before yesterday, as a gentleman of old family and quite distinguished, and receives from that quarter the same treatment he bestows on his left-hand neighbour. The real gentleman is the same all the world over. Such are by no means lacking here, while the pretended gentlemen swarm in America. Chaucer said a good word long ago:

- This is not mine intendément
To clepen no wight in no age
Only gentle for his lineage;
But whoso that is virtuous,

And in his port not outrageous:

When such one thou see'st thee beforn,

Though he be not gentle born,

Thou mayest well see this in soth,
That he' is gentle, because he doth
As 'longeth to a gentleman;
Of them none other deem I can;
For certainly withouten drede,
A churl is deeméd by his deed,
Of high or low, as ye may see,
Or of what kindred that he be."

It is no wonder vulgar men, who travel here and eat our dinners, laugh at this form of vulgarity. Wiser men see its cause, and prophesy its speedy decay. Every nation has its aristocracy, or controlling class: in some lands it is permanent

an aristocracy of blood; men that are descended from distinguished warriors, from the pirates and freebooters of a rude age. The Nobility of England are proud of their fathers' deeds, and emblazon the symbols thereof in their family arms, emblems of barbarism. Ours is an aristocracy of wealth, not got by plunder, but by toil, thrift, enterprise; of course it is a movable aristocracy: the first families of the last century are now forgot, and their successors will give place to new names. Now earning is nobler than robbing, and work is before war; but we are ashamed of both, and seek to conceal the noble source of our wealth. An aristocracy of gold is far preferable to the old and immovable nobility of blood, but it has also its peculiar vices; it has the effrontery of an upstart, despises its own ladder, is heartless and lacks noble principle; vulgar

and cursing. This lust of wealth, however, does us a service, and gives the whole nation a stimulus which it needs, and, low as the motive is, drives us to continual advancement. It is a great merit for a nation to secure the largest amount of useful and comfortable and beautiful things which can be honestly earned, and used with profit to the body and soul of man. Only when wealth becomes an Idol, and material abundance is made the end, not the means, does the love of it become an evil. No nation was ever too rich, or over thrifty, though many a nation has lost its soul by living wholly for the senses.

Now and then we see noble men living apart from this vulgarity and scramble; some rich, some poor, but both content to live for noble aims, to pinch and spare for virtue, religion, for Truth and Right. Such men never fail from any age or land, but everywhere they are the exceptional men. Still they serve to keep alive the sacred fire in the hearts of young men, rising amid the common mob as oaks surpass the brambles or

the fern.

In these secondary qualities of the people which mark the special signs of the times, there are many contradictions, quality contending with quality; all by no means balanced into harmonious relations. Here are great faults not less than great virtues. Can the national faults be corrected? Most certainly; they are but accidental, coming from our circumstances, our history, our position as a people-heteroge neous, new, and placed on a new and untamed continent. They come not from the nation's soul; they do not belong to our fundamental Idea, but are hostile to it. One day our impatience of Authority, our philosophical tendency, will lead us to a right method, that to fixed principles, and then we shall have a Continuity of National Action. Considering the pains taken by the fathers of the better portion of America to promote religion here, remembering how dear is Christianity to the heart of all, conservative and radical-though men often name as Christian what is not-and seeing how Truth and Right are sure to win at last,-it becomes pretty plain that we shall arrive at true principles, Laws of the Universe, Ideas of God; then we shall be in unison also with it and Him. When that great defect- lack of first principles-is corrected, our intensity of life, with the Hope and confidence it inspires, will do a great work for us. We have already secured an abun