even.

executive officers, and keep their posts for life, or during good behavior, let us be grateful, honoring them with our confidence because they are skilled, so far as any can be, to keep the scales of justice But under the prevailing system it is folly to speak of statesmanship. Statesmanship is not encouraged, it is not permitted. It must become politic in the shameful meanings of that term—and — succeed by failure. That is, the politicians succeed, while statesmen remain private citizens. It is complained that the best men stand aloof from politics. What else can they do? What chance of success have they in a wrangle for place and power? To enter such a contest they must become second, third, and fourth best. It is not the disposition of masses of people as yet to forecast the future. They sow and reap the same day; and what they reap is fit but for the day. Their grasp is short, and they are conservative of small interests. Let them stand apart for a season and be obliged to scheme less, their horizon will expand, and somewhat nobler possess them. Elections occurring every other day are enough to demoralize any people. Ballots are something, but they cut both ways like some other weapons. We need to insist that the business of politics shall give us the least possible trouble. We want repose, peace, opportunity for more substantial and cheering results. Now we are doing little else than building, patching, fretting, calculating about the machinery of government, and voting for some one to keep it in motion. It is a dreary and withal, profitless task. It is confessing that the temple is more than the soul within, the body more than meat.

Permit the politicians to come to an end by neglect. Hawthorne has fitly described them as men whose "hearts wither away, and die out of their bodies." He further describes them as "machines." It requires a tremendous drain upon the wealth of the land, both spiritual and material, to keep such "machines" in motion. We want to get rid of superfluities. We want to forego superfluous work. Civilization is the art of doing less. So much ado for nothing! There is no doubt about the truth of that part of the prayer which runs, 'we have done those things which we ought not to have done.' The gain is not to do more things, but fewer and better. The patience of the people must long ago have been exhausted had they not believed that there was no other method whereby they could be saved. It will be much better when they turn to saving themselves. We shall give the idea of self government its highest import when our attention is turned in this direction. 'I will do of my own accord what the wise law would compel me to do.' You wish we might get on without fighting with bayonetts. I wish we might without fighting even with bits of paper!

"But the Millennium has not arrived."

"Permit mankind to suppose that it has arrived in you."

"I need protection to my person and property."

"It shall be to you according to your faith in your own weapons." "I hardly see that."

"And that is precisely the trouble all around. But if we should give ourselves less trouble about protecting ourselves, and become more trustful of the better side of humanity, do you not think we should obtain a different result? It is so rarely done that it seems rather fanciful. But look over your list of your acquaintances. You remember A: he is in constant turmoils of excitement protecting himself. I know of no one who obtains so little peace. And some of those with whom he has most trouble, I find to be as agreeable even as he is himself. But I know there is in all this what you regard as moonshine, and that you would enjoy having a gang of robbers get after me and mine, even though they could find little to satisfy them. We will discuss the matter again some other time. Meantime, let us insist that government be accomplished with as little fuss as possible, and pray without ceasing

"For the Millennium?"

"Yes, call it that if you choose."

THE DIVIDING LINE.

It is very difficult to preserve a spiritual rectitude. The temptations for a departure were never stronger than now. The privacy of the soul is invaded from every quarter. Spiritual laws are not only distrusted but are flatly denied to have any reality in nature. There is no faith in aught but material force. Whoso retires from the whirl of the times-skulks. The missionaries have a plan; they know it will work. Will you step into the harness? No? Then it is a selfish part you are acting, your light is going out under a bushel. The difficulties are largely increased by the fact that the pleaders for organization are often persons of the best intentions, and their aims are, they assure you, the highest. Do they not propose a good work, and a practical work? Your privacy, and your dreaming are absolutely inconsequent. You are brushed aside and overthrown with the slightest whiff of satanic breath. You alone? and each of us alone? The enemy will vanquish us all in detail. But if we combine, display our colors, sound blast on blast from the trump of the Spirit, we shall rally the spiritual forces of the age and turn the tide of battle. Come, why isolate ourselves, and leave the field to the foe? It is a stout heart, an invulnerable faith that resists this appeal. The most

eminent are persuaded into compromise if not into hearty cooperation. The idealist is fairly by this enthusiasm smoked out of his attic, and forth he comes, with what grace of mien he can, to speak in the reform meeting, and cheer on the world's new Chariot of Zion. Is it not quite remarkable that these solitary, unpractical, unsocial beings, these men of no force in the community, are the very ones most sought for, when the practical, enthusiastic company new formed for the redemption of the race, wish to launch their enterprise, or when it lags and they have to revive it? Somehow it occurs that a word from one of the unpractical sort goes as if shot from a bow straight to its mark. Their sanction has a kind of omnipotence in it, which the tenders on the machinery are delighted to avail themselves of. This fact seems to argue that the Idealist or Spiritualist should retain at whatever cost his seat of power. His strength lies in his reserve. He does not communicate as others. His message looses its import when he is urged into sending it over their wires. He has nothing to do with shooting people, with forcing or winning them over to his side. The ways and means are in nature; in the dispositions of men, and in their necessities. There is a freedom of selection which belongs to mankind that he must respect. If he has been able to produce anything for them, they will come to him for it. Let him turn himself into a pedlar, and they will say, he comes with trash. History vindicates him if he stays at home. The present moment would also, if men were able to trace the sources of power, and measure what influence it is that is prevailing.

The lesson would seem to be that spiritual laws must not only be spiritually discerned, but that there is also a spiritual method by which they are to be communicated. And just here the real division occurs. The line does not run between different sects, or parties. It does not divide the world into orthodox and liberal, trinitarian and unitarian, nor radical and conservative. The division lies between spirit and matter, Spiritualist and Materialist.

BOOK NOTICES.

WOMAN. THE College, the MARKET, AND THE COURT, or Woman's Relation to Education, Labor, and Law. By CAROLINE H. DALL. Lee & Shepherd. 1867.

WHEN the Emancipation Proclamation set the seal upon the confident hope of Anti-Slavery men, a good lady was heard to say, "How I envy the Abolitionists now, they are having such good times. In the very next reform I mean to begin at the beginning, that I may have as much delight in its success." The dear good woman perhaps does not even now recognize some infant Hercules who is strangling the snakes that seek to destroy him.

While this most imperative but partial reform has absorbed the attention of statesmen and philanthropists, a far deeper and more vital question has been working its way into the hearts and minds of men, until we are astonished at the proportions it suddenly assumes, and the strength which is enlisted on the side of reform. The claims and position of woman which thirty years ago formed a sure mark for ridicule and abuse, have now become the great question to which it is clear that civilization must give a right answer before it can go forward in its triumphant course. Begin now, good friends if you wish to rejoice in the end, for it is so clear that great triumphs will shortly be won, that we almost lose our interest in the game, and are inclined to turn to sweet and congenial work, perhaps forgetting the toil and battle yet needed before the end will be gained. Who believed thirty years ago that Female Suffrage would be now a prominent question before the Constitutional Convention of New York, and gravely discussed by the Parliament of Great Britain ?

But while we are clear in our demand and sure of our victory on many practical points, behind these lie great problems which concern the deepest springs of life to which no solution seems yet possible. Emerson counts sex among those questions to which we hardly yet hope for an answer. Yet we plainly see that it is a grand leading law of the Universe.

Duality, Union resulting in a new product unlike either, yet partaking of the properties of both, is the marriage law which shows itself in the great Cosmic forces of the Universe, and in the mechanic powers which control dead matter; in Chemical relations which already take the name of affinities; in the varied and beautiful relations of vegetable life, until at last in animate nature we have the full recognition of sex symbolizing still higher spiritual laws. Shall we go yet farther and ask if there is sex in souls? Coleridge dogmatically asserts it with a severe anathema on all who disbelieve, but we ask to be excused from entering on so abstruse a question until we have decided a little better what is a soul and what is sex.

Looking at the subject of Woman's Right from a philosophical standpoint, our great interest is that by the clearing away of barriers we shall

come to know what man and woman really are, what are their true relations, and what are the greater possibilities of development for both. The suffering Negro's release from the whip and chain is not the best result of Emancipation, but the new testimony to the Unity of Human Nature, and the differing, but equal gifts of the races. Schoolmen may prate of the negro's skull and foot indicating inferiority, the Freedmen's school settles that question very soon.

Are we yet ready to say what is the true position of the sexes in all the varied relations of life? Nobody would accept the condition of woman in past ages. All are tenacious of what has been gained for woman, and man too, however unwilling to risk anything in the hope of future improveAll we ask now, therefore is, that civil and political disabilities being removed, woman may reveal her true nature, and the relation of the sexes may be adjusted on that natural "Law whose seat is the bosom of God."

ment.

We find no fault, therefore, with Mrs. Dall, that she has mainly ignored the deep problems of sex, and treating her subject historically and practically, is, as she confesses, very suggestive, but by no means exhaustive in her

statements.

The very title limits her aim. The College, the Market, and the Court, are but the outposts of a Woman's life, within these are the Temple and the Home, especially needing her presence and her power.

It is the common cry of all Anti-Woman's Rights preachers, that woman should be content in her home, assuming that Home as at present existing is a perfect institution, radiating an influence always potent and always for good. But the Home is no better in proportion than the Church or the Market. Many a man learns his meanness and selfishness there.

"Oh I see thee old and formal, fitted to thy petty part,

With a little hoard of maxims preaching down a daughter's heart,"

is true of many a mother. The Home always has a sacred charm for us, from its Divine Organ, as we always rejoice in marriage, though we know how imperfect are the unions over which we have exchanged congratulations.

But on the lowest plane, what waste of material in our homes! What consequent disorder, poverty, discomfort. What sacrifice of health from ignorance of sanitary and physiological laws! What irritable invalidism in the mother, what turbulent unrest in the children! How discordant and ill adjusted the relation between mistress and servant. Woman needs a larger, freer, physical development, a more thorough mental education, a more vitalized existence before we shall find her greater, and more efficient in her home. If we did not believe that the right of suffrage, the custom of labor, and the privileges of education would bear rich fruit here, we should not claim them as we do now.

Mrs. Dall's intellectual ambition which early led her to such a rich and varied culture has been turned into a noble channel. For many years she has labored by her writings and her lectures for various philanthropic movements specially connected with the cause of Woman. Her books have