stanch friend of religious institutions, and has he not often been heard to say that the Church was quite invaluable as an instrument of conservatism, as a means for keeping the ignorant and passionate under some salutary restraint? When he speaks of the impossibility of knowing anything about the secrets of the universe, and the uselessness of speculating upon the causes and essences of things, his conversation is really edifying to all comfort-loving souls. And so large is his charity, that, in his tolerance, all religions are alike to him one is no more true or venerable than another; he has a theory that they are all, at last, the same thing. And to show that this is not mere theory, he actually changed his religion two or three times in Europe, in order to gain admission to certain holy cities and shrines belonging to the Turks. He is beneficent too. He contributed last year to the ragged schools, saying wisely, that it was better to pay a dollar for prevention than ten dollars for cure; that poor schools were cheaper than jails, and teachers less expensive than officers. It is so painful for him to contemplate suffering, that he often flings an alms to a street beggar with an air which seems to say that it costs him less to give than to refuse. He disapproves, in the abstract, of grave social wrongs, even when they do not affect himself. And such is his love of peace and quietness, that he would be glad to hang and shoot everybody who disturbs the settled tranquillity of the public mind. He is a kind, pleasant, patronizing, gracious gentleman, with the softest voice and blandest manner and handsomest words you ever knew, and it is a shame to call him a materialist and an atheist, a man of such affability and delicacy.

But Epicurus is happy, happy in his temperament and happy in his condition, happy in his felicitous choice of amusements and of vices, happy in his felicitous escape from the curse of anxiety and care, happy in his pleasant selfesteem, and happy in the reputation he enjoys of being an estimable member of society, a patron of liberal arts, a friend of order and good morals, a moderate man shunning extremes, and exhibiting to the world the natural alliance between virtue and happiness, the entire truth of the maxim that gain is godliness.

VOL. LXXI. - 5TH S. VOL. IX. NO. I.

3

One Peter Gassendi, a cross between a clergyman and a chemist, is the author of several books aiming to prove that the ancient Epicurus was really a very good Christian. Epicureans generally were converted to his way of thinking. But the matter still remains in dispute. Some will have it that Gassendi was quizzing, much as Hamlet quizzed Polonius. We may suppose, however, that the good man was really in earnest, though his earnestness was of rather a quaint and muddled sort. Probably he was not unlike a certain old dame who went with an ancient sister to hear a certain famous preacher, respecting whose sanctity the public opinion was much divided. As they came from the meeting-house together, both in a state of high spiritual comfort, her companion said to her, "Well now, dear me, I really do think that Mr. Proof-Text is as good as Jesus Christ." "O no," said the other, "not as good as Jesus Christ, I cannot quite think that. But let me tell you, I think he may be as good as Antichrist."

But let us not refuse his due meed of praise to the prince of Epicures for what he has done in behalf of humanity. He has taught men to look about them sagaciously and kindly, and to appreciate the privileges of their earthly existence. No matter for the stars, they are no great things; vex not yourselves about the super-celestial; strain not your eyes by vain endeavors to look into the hereafter. Star-gazers often walk into wells; dreamers and idealists and aspirants after the perfect good are apt to stumble over the little pebbles of daily duty which lie thickly upon our common walk. Enjoy the hour. Snatch the moment's satisfaction. Take such gifts as the gods send, and be thankful. Here is nectar, sip it ere its bouquet is wasted; here are flowers, pluck them while they are fragrant; here are songs, listen and sing. To-day is all the day you have. The next life is the nearest life; take it as it is, and make the most of it. The old philosopher has his mite of wisdom. Man is not like Raffaelle's cherubs, all head and wings, with no convenience even for sitting down. He has a body, and a wonderful one, and every instinct in it is divine. Let us see what provision there may be for that under the sun.

And so, while Plato is devising his stately theologies, setting the stars to music, weaving the ethereal stuff of which religions

are made, fashioning out of dreams, longings, fears, anticipations, and all the invisible material of human thought, a palpable home for the human soul to dwell in;- while Zeno, the Stoic, is drilling man's will for its grand work of battling with the Devil, making systems of morals, propounding maxims of self-denial, nursing heroism, and calling upon men to be kings and priests unto themselves,—the amiable Epicurus is occupied with attempts to make life comfortable. He is the spiritual father of the great men in practical science. He is the animating soul of all labor-saving machinery; the prophet of iron, gas, electricity, of railways, ocean-steamers, lightning-presses, and magnetic telegraphs. At the bidding of his philosophy the Northern cities have summer all the winter long in their houses, and the dwellers in tropical climes cool their sherbet with crystals from frozen lakes. At his bidding the liberated spirits of the coal-mine illumine our parlors with fountains of flame. He speaks the word, and the distant river sends a rill into our chambers. Thanks to the philosopher of the world, the seamstress has found steel fingers, and need no longer sing the Song of the Shirt. The farmer on the Western prairie takes a morning's drive on his patent reaper, and sees the grain on a hundred acres fall merrily to his whistled Yankee Doodle. The invalid gets an airing in his wheel-chair without horse or servant. The bruised, the maimed, the cancerous, wander away in dreams to the Elysian Fields, and, returning, find that the offending part has been removed by the surgeon's swift and merciful knife. Great things, certainly, Epicurus and his fraternity have accomplished. Thanks to the kindly philosopher and his disciples for smoothing our track, and stuffing our carriage so handsomely; for teaching us how we may lounge and smoke while the elements are doing our work. Thanks to them for making the earth an agreeable home, instead of a desert or a dungeon. Thanks to them for their honest pursuit of temporal ease and physical comfort, for their brave experiments on human happiness. And thanks to them for their sad confession that the pursuit of earthly happiness is fruitless, that the experiments are failures, that the attempt to transform men into butterflies is resisted no less by the outward conditions of their existence than by their inborn convictions of immortality and God.

1. Neues allgemeines Künstler-Lexicon oder Nachrichten von dem Leben und den Werken der Maler, Bildhauer, Baumeister, Kupferstecher, Formschneider, Lithographen, Zeichner, Medailleure, Elfenbeinarbeiter, etc. Bearbeitet von DR. G. K. NAGLER. Dreizehnter Band. München: Verlag von E. A. Fleischmann. 1843. [Art. Rietschel, pp. 176-178.]

2. Conversations-Lexicon. Zehnte, verbesserte und vermehrte Auflage. Zwölfter Band. Leipzig: F. A. Brockhaus. 1854. [Art. Rietschel, p. 785.]

3. Beilagen zu den Nummern 84 und 85 der Allgemeine Zeitung, 25–26 März, 1861.

THE first week of September, 1857, was a brilliant one in the little capital of Weimar. Dull for the most part in these latter days, as if fallen asleep in musing upon those which are gone, it took on a certain brisk activity, and gayly decorated its old Stadthaus in the market-place, and the Rathhaus opposite, built over anew in the Gothic style after the fire of 1837, whose histories, if you are curious in these matters, will carry you back four centuries and more, to the days of the Landgraf Friedrich the Simple and the vigorous times of the Holy Roman Empire. It extended its zeal too, and its green branches, to the houses in which Goethe and Schiller and Wieland and Herder once lived, in that flower-time when Germany burst fragrant into the world's history with its wreath of Weimar glories. Goethe's house was adorned with the same emblems which he himself devised in 1825, upon occasion of the half-century anniversary of the rule of Karl August, whose hundredth birthday they celebrated now this 3d of September. With that we have nothing to do. It is with the next day we are concerned for a moment,-not with the multitude which gathered in the rain round the new statue of Wieland, in the place called by his name, by Gasser of Vienna, but with that which gathers in the open space before the theatre, where stands the Dioscuri group, from which the covering is withdrawn amidst the shouts of the multitude. And RIETSCHEL's twin statues of Goethe and Schiller look down

in solemn majesty upon the upturned eager faces, among them those of Schiller's grandchildren and Goethe's sons, and the artist, together with Miller, the director of the famous bronze-foundery at Munich, where the statues were cast, received each, from the hands of the Grand Duke, the Order of the White Falcon; as also the last actor of Goethe's time, the court-player Genast, the great golden Service-medal. At night they lighted up the statues, and the chorus of many Voices rang through the silent streets.

There was much rejoicing in Weimar in this brilliant week. For the guests who streamed thither from all parts of Germany there was a visit to the Wartburg, and a concert at which the compositions of Franz Liszt were performed under the direction of that great artist himself, and balls and illuminations. Goethe's study and sleeping-chamber, peremptorily closed to all the world for fifteen years, with the exception of his hundredth birthday in 1849, were opened now, and an eyewitness relates how in Schiller's modest dwelling he saw a man stoop down and kiss the coverlet of the bed upon which the great poet breathed his last.

It was an affecting moment when the covering fell from the statues, and many eyes were filled with tears, says the contemporary account. United in life, united in the memory of their nation after death, now at last united in bronze, one the complement of the other, an imperial pair; - Goethe calm and full of dignity, in firm possession of the wreath which he offers to his friend; Schiller, as if in motion, ever struggling onward, reaching at last the height which Goethe has long occupied. On Goethe's face is the calm assurance of victory, while the joy of triumph just won illumines Schiller's features. It is the ideal of both lives which stands visible before you,worthiest memorial which Weimar shall point to in the coming time of the great masters of song who have made its name immortal.

The Englishman prides himself upon his common sense, and affects to despise the Ideal. He values a thought for its utility, the German, for its beauty. The philosopher will not quarrel with the tendency of either, but will recognize the function of both in the culture of the race. Yet how these