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'HE 1882. PRINTED AT THE SALEM PRESS. CONTENTS. Page. Memorial to Jones Very, 1 Remarks of \V. P. Andrews, 2; Edward A. Silsbee, 5; Correspon- dence, 2G. Social Meeting, Monday, January 3, 1881, . . . . 35 Winter Field Meeting at Chebacco Ponds, Tuesday, January 11, 1881, 35 The excursion. 30; Remarks of F. W. Putnam, 3G; Prof. E. S. Morse, 3U; Dr. C. C Abbott, 37; John Robinson, 3s; and others. Our Trees in Winter, by John Robinson, 38 Regular Meeting, Monday, January 17, 1881, .... 52 Charles E. Endicott, lecture on China, notice of, 52. Regular Meeting, Monday, February 1, 1881, ... 54 James F. Almy, lecture. A sketch of travels in Europe during the summer of i860, notice of, 5t. Regular Meeting, Monday, March 7, 1881, .... 57 The French Republic, by Amos Noyes, 57 Regular Meeting, Monday, March 21, 1881, . . . . 64 J. P. Cowles, informal talk on China, notice of, 64. Regular Meeting, Monday, April 4, 1881, 64 The Glacial Phenomena of North America and their relation to the question of man's antiquity in the valley of the Delaware, by Rev. G. F. Wright, 65 Regular Meeting, Monday, April 18, 1881, .... 73 Prof. Isaac J. Osbun, lecture on Science teaching in the schools, no- tice of, 73. Regular meeting, Monday, May 2, 1881, 73 Explanation of an invention for using the sun's rays as a means of heating and ventilation, by Prof. eTs. Morse, 73; Remarks by Prof. I. J. Osbun, and E. 8. Morse, 74. A List of the Birds of the Hudson Highlands, with annotations; by Edgar A. Mearna {continued) 75 (iii) iv CONTENTS. Annual Meeting, Monday, May 10, 1881, 93 Robert S. Rantoul. memoirs of Hon. James Kimball and Prof. Ben- j.imin Peirce, 93; Election of officers, 94; Retrospect of the year, 95; Members, 95; Field-meetings, 96; Excursions. 98; Lectures, 99; Meetings, 100; Social meeting, 101 ; Concerts, 101 ; Publications, 101; Library, 102; Museum, 111; Manuscripts, 112; Financial, 112. Anniversary of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, notice of, . . . • • • .... 113 Visit of the American Association for the Advancement of Sci- ence, notice of, 114 Visit to Cambridge, Wednesday, May 25, 1881, . . . 115 Regular Meeting, Monday, June 6, 1881, 116 Remarks by the President, 116; Resolutions adopted, 116. Regular Meeting, Monday, June 20, 1881, . . . .117 Field Meeting at Rowley, Thursday, July 7, 1881, ... 117 The excursion. 117; Remarks by John H. Sears, 119; Rev. John Pike, D. D., 119; Rev. G. M. Harmon, 119; Rev. Charles C. Bruce, 120; N. A. Horton, 120; John Robinson, 120. Dissemination of Seeds, by Mary N. Plumer, .... 121 Field Meeting at Marblehead Neck, Wednesday, August 3, 1881, 147 The excursion. 147; Remarks bv the President, 149; John H. Sears, 149; J. J. H. Gregory, 149; Prof. E. S. Morse, 150; William D. North- end, 151. Field Meeting at Saugus, Wednesday, August 30, 1881, . 152 The excursion. 152; Remarks by the President, 153; John H. Seat's, 153; Lecture by Prof. Herbert B. Adams on the Commons and Com- moners of Salem, notice of, 154; Remarks by Dr. J. W. Goodell, 155; E. P. Robinson, 155. Field meeting at Boxford, Saturday, October 8, 1881, . . 159 The excursion, 157; Remarks by Rev. W. P. Alcott, 158; Address of John Robinson, notice of, 15S; Remarks by Henrv Wheatland, 159; Vote of thanks, 159; Visit to the Match Factory, 159; Notice of the Boxford Natural History Society, by Sidney Perley, 161. Introduced Plants found in the vicinity of a Wool Scouring es- tablishment, by William P. Alcott, 162 Excursion to Chelsea, Friday, October 14, 1881, . . .166 Remarks by the President, 167; J. G. Low, 167; Prof. E. S. Morse, 167; F. W. Putnam, 167; Vote of thanks, 168. Regular Meeting, Monday, November 7, 1881, . . .168 Regular Meeting, Tuesday, November 22, 1881, . . .169 Communication from the Historical Society of Prince Edward Island, 169; Reply to the Same, 171. Regular Meeting, Monday, December 19, 1881, . . .173 Notes on the Forest Trees of Essex, Clinton and Franklin Coun- ties, New York, by John H. Sears 174 BULLETIN ESSEX! INSTITUTE. Vol. 13. Salem, Jan., Feb., March, 1881. Nos. 1, 2, 3. Tuesday, Dec. 14, 1880. MEMORIAL TO JONES VERY. The memorial meeting to commemorate the life and services to literature of our distinguished townsman, Rev. Jones Very, the poet, was held in the rooms of the Essex Institute this evening. The meeting was called to order by the President, Dr. Henry Wheatland., who said : This is a special meeting, called at the request of several members. The object was stated in the call. A visitor to Ship Rock in Peabody, the famous bowlder now owned by the Essex Institute, should he extend his ramble, on some pleasant summer's day, farther along the brook, half a mile or so, to Cedar Pond, he will observe the ruins of an old cellar with stones scattered around covered with vines, a few moss-covered apple trees in the midst of a growth of oaks and pines, the old well now covered with a stone, and the road long discontinued and overgrown with woods and shrubbery, scarcely discernible. Here Bridget Very, at an early period in our history, with her two sons and a daughter settled, and with strong hands and brave hearts cleared the land and made for ESSEX INST. BULLETIN, VOL. XIII. 1 (1) 2 REV. JONES VERY, IX MEMORIAM ; themselves a home ; and for several generations members of this family cultivated these acres, until a desire for a change or otherwise prompted them to remove elsewhere. Similar indications may be noticed, in rambles through the woods in this vicinity, of a previous occupancy by some of the old settlers ; the depression in the earth, vine- covered rocks scattered around, and a few plants that follow in the footsteps of man, still linger and seem to flourish amidst those indigenous to the soil. The construction of new roads, and the discontinuance of some of the old, probably necessitated this change. It is not our intention this evening to give a sketch of the family, — this has been done, in part at least, by other hands, — but to present to your consideration several communications, verbal and written, commemorative of the life and service to litera- ture of a descendant, who was a fellow-towosman and one whose familiar form we had long been accustomed to see in our streets and at the meetings and gatherings of the Institute ; though dead, his works survive and will long keep his memory green. REMARKS OF MR. ANDREWS. The President then introduced Mr. William P. An- drews, who spoke of the familiarity of the audience with Mr. Yery's personal appearance, recalling the many oc- casions upon which they had seen him enter the hall in which they then were, and modestly seat himself at the feet of men greatly his inferiors in intellectual and spir- itual attainment. A remark of Mr. Charles T. Brooks was alluded to, to the effect that Mr. Very's townsmen had seen him so often they had become perfectly familiar with the stalk, but extremely few knew the beauty of the flower. Mr. Andrews expressed the hope that something W. P. ANDREWS REMARKS. 3 of its fragrance might have escaped, as it were, into the paper he then read on the " Life and Spiritual Experience of Jones Very, the Poet." The status of Salem as an entry port for East India mer- chandise at the time of Mr. Very's birth, on the 28th of August, a. d., 1813, was briefly referred to, and a tribute paid to the worth and intelligence of her shipmasters. Some account of " Capt." Jones Very, the poet's father, was then given, and of his mother, Lvdia Very, a daugh- ter of "Capt." Very's uncle, Samuel Very, who like his nephew commanded one of the vessels sailing from Salem. Mention was also made of the poet's brother, the Rev. Washington Very, his sisters Miss Frances E. and Lvdia L. A. Very ; and of the interesting fact that " Capt." Very himself and all the members of his family were fond of verse-making, some of which had shown decided literary talent. The facts of Mr. Very's early life were then rehearsed ; his voyages to Russia and Xew Orleans with his father when a lad of nine or ten years of age ; his father's death, which occurred in December, 1824, and young Jones's provident care of the family. His service as store boy in an auction room was then spoken of; his gravity of demeanor, and his faithfulness to the duties devolving upon him in a distasteful occupation. His intense love of literature was related, and the means by which he obtained the books he needed to fit him for college, in the course of the business in which he was engaged. It was then stated that Mr. Very prepared himself with great rapidity and thoroughness, and entered Harvard College in the last term of the sophomore year, 1834. It was said that Mr. Very was unusually mature at this time, and that his most intimate associations were mainly among the older residents of Cambridge and the instructors, all of whom esteemed him highly. He graduated in 1836, next the 4 REV. JONES VERY, IN MEMORIAM ; head of his class, and was appointed a tutor in Greek, studying meanwhile at the Divinity school, whence he never formally graduated, owing to ill health, but returned to Salem in 1838. He was, however, duly licensed as a preacher by the Cambridge Association in 1843. Accounts of persons then studying in Cambridge were given, showing the deep impression of mental and spirit- ual power which Mr. Very made on all with whom he came in contact ; and the great rapidity and fluency with which his noblest sonnets were produced (mostly at this time) were alluded to. The warm and personal friendship existing between "Mr. Very and Mr. Emerson, R. H. Dana, the poet, and other distinguished men, and the exalted opinion they then had of his worth as a man, and of his " extraordinary" merit as a poet, were then shown by copious extracts from letters written about or to Mr. Very by the gentlemen named, including an account of Mr. Emerson's assistance in the preparation of the little volume of "Essays and Poems by Jones Very," published by Little & Brown, at Mr. Emerson's personal solicitation in 1839. The unique state of great spiritual exaltation under which Mr. Very produced this work was then detailed at length ; from accounts given at the time by Rev. Dr. Channing, Mr. Emerson, Rev. Dr. Clarke, Miss Eliza- beth P. Peabody, and others, showing that Mr. Very's mental powers were stimulated to great activity, by his belief that he had surrendered his own will to the will of God, and become a passive instrument of the Divine Spirit. That Mr. Very had not lost his reason, as was at the time alleged by persons unacquainted with him, was amply proved from the same sources ; all the persons named uniting in pronouncing him profoundly and even exceptionally sane. His religious convictions were illustrated by frequent W. P. ANDREWS' REMARKS. 5 and extended extracts from Mr. Very's own poetry, some of which was also quoted at length, to exhibit his intense and absorbing love of Nature, both for her own sake and as a Divine Interpreter to man. The prose essays, included in this early volume, were spoken of as having great merit, and as being distin- guished by much of the melodious movement which marks the lyric quality of Mr. Very's verse, for which latter, Bryant, Emerson, Dana, and many other excellent judges have predicted an immortality. It was sug- gested that Mr. Very's writings had lent a spiritual and personal interest to the scenery about Salem, which would prove a worthy complement to the historic and romantic pageantry with which his friend Hawthorne's brilliant imagination had already filled its streets. A warm tribute to Mr. Very's worth as a man was quoted from a personal letter by Rev. K. C. Waterston, his life-long friend, and the fact of his death at Salem on the 8th of May, a. d., 1880, related. Mr. Andrews concluded by remarking that though all that was mortal of Jones Very had ceased from life, his work had hardly yet begun its mission. His poetry would long remain a gushing brooklet, bringing cheer and refreshment to many weary lives. His gentle spirit still sheds its benediction upon all who were fortunate enough to know him ; an influence that will remain un- forgotten, while his favorite the Windflower blooms with a "meek, confiding grace," that fitly typifies his spirit, or his kinsfolk the columbines still nod and beckon from their " craggy hill." MR. SILSBEE'S REMARKS. Mr. Edward A. Silsbee, being called upon, spoke sub- stantially as follows : 6 REV. JONES VERY, IN MEMORIAM ; I intend to speak only as to Mr. Very's literary ex- cellence and place. Single as he was in his own literature, I would be as single in the purpose and end of these remarks, and with some variety of illustration, — to talk about poetry with Mr. Very as text. The American loves the superlative. Amid endless surroundings, it is easy to see why. His language stretches after a reality which is ever fleeing before him. He lives in the midst of boundlessness and his words labor after its conceptions. By a natural sympathy, lim- itless vistas, physical and intellectual, slip into the at- mosphere of his mind. Words of unbounded meaning alone fit his emotions. The continent swells in his speech. He is the most unfettered creature ever put upon the earth, the last heir of time, he believes the final. If I follow the national bent of sweeping assertion and emphatic statement, I shall only be patriotic and very natural. Cut off from the past which is poetry, we become imi- tative. Our intellectual home is England or the old world, stretching back through literature and life to an- tiquity and the bible. We have none of it. We are raw, we are dio^ing the foundation of a new civilization to correct and abolish the errors of the old. There is no superstructure yet. We have just begun. We are imper- fect germs sloughed off to manure the future. Every- thing is tentative here, inchoate. Our people are impressible, have an artistic tempera- ment more than the English. They are poetic, romantic, we are not. Nothing in our bare, mercantile life, just scratching the continent, yet makes us so. No associa- tions disturb the dream of the merchant's life. The mind of America is mercantile perforce ; how can it be otherwise? There is no variety in class, history or E. A. silsbee's remarks. 7 power. The continent subdues man. Nature is too vast, the temptation too great. Civilization is practical. Xo race ever had such well-being and opportunity. We have a temperament outrunning our genius yet, but it will come. Our heads, our types, prefigure a bigger man than we are, and a more delicate woman. Genius, delicacy, rareness, we shall have them. The world has not labored in vain and travailed for five thousand years to produce us, to have us a failure. Robustness we must get and fibre. My theory is mixture of stock to give it to us ; German mind and Irish temperament, with Anglo-Saxon character as base. I say to English people the greatest thing they have done is to produce America, and so it is. If the genius in poetry is not transmitted here, the genius in the sister arts seems likely to come. We shall probably be great in art, — architecture, music, painting, — before we are in poetry or prose. Architecture has the greatest future ; an immense field is here, endless wealth and enterprise, such as created Athens, Rome, Florence, Venice. The religious impulse is wanting which did the greatest things; civil and humane motives may supply its place. There is a religion of humanity, one side of religion, use and be- neficence. We can wait for literature. It will be the better for the waiting. The American nature is not knit yet, as Burke remarked a hundred years ago, nor the character formed. We are thinned-out English needing enrich- ment. This is shown in poetry, a sensitive proof; it is not sustained, masculine as the English is, nor is criti- cism. It stumbles and falls away from the points it reaehes. For the fitting America, literature, art, life, we shall have to wait. They could not come now, and better not. We are building slowly, barely laying the founda- 8 REV. JONES VERY, IN MEMORIAM ; tion, money fiends let loose in a continent. Puritan in- tensity goes to trade. The American hero is a rich man. Formerly it was "King" Hooper in Marblehead and Derby here. Now it is Vanderbilt and Stewart in New York, and Bonanza kings on the Pacific. They sway the con- tinent and shake the markets of the world. A curious thing it is, the richest men are not Americans — of Eng- lish stock — Astor, Girard, Vanderbilt, Stewart, Mackay. We are beaten in our own field. The richest man in the world is a Jew. We devote more talent to getting money than any people, but we spend it more freely, and are less mercenary than Europeans. We are generous and live on a scale they don't know. The American is ashamed of economy. He thinks it belittles him. He is barbarous. The influence of materialism here is great and undue, because it is a new country, as is commonly recognized. There is no tradition, no past, no romance, — that is all in Europe, speaking broadly. It is not worth while to go on sentimentally about this, or to make it too much capital in trade as literary men do sometimes, James for ex- ample. Hawthorne took note of it. Emerson has fought it all his life. Irvino' made much of the old world. With this enormous weight of material civilization to contend against, we can fly to nature as Very did in- stinctively. Look at our chequer-board cities and ab- sence of all past. The past is as needful to man as the future. We destroy it as soon as we make it. We have to seek it in Europe, which is to us what Greece was to Rome, the source of the more aesthetic culture and re- finement. The past never tempers our lives or appeals to our imaginations. It is the future. Everything is painfully new and does us harm, makes ns material. We are carted off and dumped down into every new 9 state we form. We are incessantly thinned out to fill up the West. The seaboard is a sieve. The Ohio New Englander is greater than his ancestor, the best type of American, midway east and west. He is more in the mould of Washington. The centre has shifted westward. The only great man New England produced, world-wide man, was Franklin. He had to be hurried out of New England before he was of age. It is impossible to conceive of Franklin having grown up, been bred, and filling out his career in Boston — the most antique man we have had, a pagan as big as Goethe. New England is the indispensable influence, not the basis. With all our vastness, we are colonial, provincial ; crude for that very reason ; too widespread to ripen and grow mature on our own ground and by our own figtree. We cannot be at home in three thousand miles of continent and in forty states, each sovereign. It is like loving a parish. There cannot be more than a certain number of brothers and sisters. You cannot fold the human race to your bosom, though the Mormons stretch things in this way I suppose. The whole American poetry is not equal to one great English poet, and would not be missed if lost to-morrow. Not to speak of Chaucer, Spenser and the whole great roll, we have no Wordsworth, Byron, Shelley, Keats, Scott, Coleridge, Dry den, Gray, Pope, Thompson nor Moore, — not a man to set beside them. Our poetry is in a hopeless minor key, has pleasing notes, no new har- mony ; has never displayed a new phase of imaginative feeling and an accompanying freshness of form, the poet's own. It is not a great part of literature, hardly a brick to put into the edifice of English poetic literature, we think not one. He is a poet who stands for something distinctively his own and cannot be missed in English lit- 10 REV. JONES VERY, IN MEMORIAM ; erature. Now Very in his fine way comes as near to this as anybody. It is but a note, a very little note, but it is a note contributed to English literature. Our poets bear the same relation to universal literature that English art bears to universal art. We need not be startled therefore ; all English art is not equal to one old master, in painting or in music. They are absolutely without great genius in music and painting. Why these gifts are given to nations who shall explain ? Why the Spaniards alone are like the English for underived genius, — Don Quixote, the ballads, Calderon? Our poets never strike the note of passion, of fire, ex- cept rhetorically, they have enough of that. It is soph- omoric. The class books were full of it when I was a boy, and how we tore the passion to tatters and empha- sized it ! Rhetoric is a stage as natural as measles. The West is grossly afflicted this way. We are saved by comparative old age. The American eagle has a bold flight, but is a vapid bird. How we delighted in this : " There's a fierce gray bird with a bending beak, And an angry eye, and a startling shriek." Or in this : Still better : At midnight in his guarded tent The Turk was dreaming of the hour." Aye, tear her tattered ensign down Lons has it waved on high." This is rhetorical inspiration, not poetic passion. It is as different from poetic passion as the singing voice from the natural. Natural feeling we have enough of, no race has more or so much. In no race is there such humanity. The American is the sweetest man in the world through the influence of woman, the family relations, which lie at the root of character. The English are brutal, the French E. A. SILSBEE'S REMARKS. 11 selfish, the German stolid and coarse. We are gentle and refined beyond any European precedent and owe it to republicanism and the sex. This alone makes up for heaps of poetry and art, and what a basis of civilization ! They are never lifted and lost, our poets, never moved to the centre, the passion is never torn out of them as it is in Wordsworth, Cowper, men of calm tempera- ment. They are never wrought upon till the fire flies as sparks from living coal. We have no ode nor elegy, ex- cept Emerson's "Threnody" be one, yet if I am right it has not the passion of sentiment. From Chaucer down, the English have been susceptible of exclamations. We have not one, only rhetorical such as I have quoted. This rhetorical stage is natural to a young people with nature at hand to inflate them and stretch their note to bursting. Our poets survey nature without ecstasy. They have never had the fine frenzy. When one will write a soul- stirring lyric to the bobolink, such as the English poets have written to the skylark, or be touched by one great feature of nature and celebrate it in immortal verse, I will believe in American poetry. The piece coming nearest to English writing in this kind seems to me Bryant's " Water Fowl," which has grace and distinction if not passion. " Wilt thou not visit me" of our own poet has something of the same note. Our poets make literary capital out of nature, catalogue her. Why they are so barren in emotion, according to Taine's manner of accounting for such phenomena and characteristics, is not far to seek perhaps, — Puritanism and a new land. Civilization is a very complex affair and depends on the past as on the future. Our past is in Europe. We are violently cut off from it. It is our in- tellectual birthright. Our intellectual home is there. Hence crudity, commonplace here, which is colonial and 12 REV. JONES VERY, IN MEMORIAM ; natural. We are not allowed to grow old, to mature. We sift into the continent and sag, and drift and settle westward. We are shifty and Arab-like and not at- tached much to place. The mind itself is just as little at anchor. Too scattered are we to grow old or keep each other in countenance. Fifty million is a thin plaster of population for a continent, one Liverpool and Man- chester extending to the Pacific. The wonder is we are as intelligent, refined and civilized as we are. We are digging and planting the continent and putting in the iron nerves of railroads. That is our function. Common- place in literature suffices, something easily read as you run. We have time for nothing else. Newspapers are our literature, thin pabulum, but better than nothing for busy millions. Nature is the cathedral of the future and Wordsworth and Very are its prophets. Byron got this note from Words worth. Wordsworth is the John the Baptist to some faith to be, which the wrorld is building up. He certainly builded better than he knew. This sentiment for nature is our great refuge from all actuality and every other lack we suffer from. It is the modern education of mankind, and we have it here. It is a new sense which can dispense with the picturesque and romantic. It is forming literature, art, life and creed. Solitary rapture with nature such as Very felt, forti- fies the soul against materialism in this dense commercial air, and is the tonic of every man's life. It is our com- pensation for history and association. We are swept off into a vortex of activity if we do not cultivate it. Who would be old here must strain after it. We must be green and promising, and widespread and familiar and superficial, for the benefit of the many. Everything is an average as yet, and better it should be so than stately E. A. silsbee's remarks. 13 colleges and an antique civilization. "We are sowing the continent with common schools, which is better than all the efflorescence of civilization impossible in a new land. Our education is one of life, civil, religious, industrial; that of Germany one of books alone. We have got to find other sources of inspiration than the world has hitherto had. America is a horde of people as like as cotton cloth and about as interesting, and as long as the governing impulse and dominant atmosphere are trade it will be so. We worship mediocrity, live in a heaven of commonplace. Faculty we believe will move mountains, not faith. Smartness is our inspiration. We have great natural feeling in this country, an un- spoilt, spontaneous and youthful nature, trustful ; our manners are founded on trust, the English on mistrust, convention. We have every quality of youth, its plastic nature, its buoyancy, its looking forward, its confidence, generosity and vigor. The English on the contrary are mature in every respect of analogy, egotistical where we are vain, a thinner fault; the Chinese of Europe, un- changing, insular. We are superficial, half-trained, achieve everything by an heroic audacity. We have no rev- erence, bear no intimidation, suffer from no infatuation, are cramped by no superstition in religion, nature or man. The English guard their rank as the Asiatics worship the Mogul. We have outgrown the superstition of rank, that sacred symbol, that social fetter and chain. We have the superstition of rich men instead. Dukes and kings are what Warwick Castle and the Tower of London are to us, picturesque antiquities. Our people crowd to see them, but they take care not to stay in England for the sake of basking in their smile. You cannot mix oil and water, democracy and aristocracy will not fuse in a common mixture or mould. We go to the continent to air our wealth. 14 REV. JONES VERY, IN MEMORIAM ; Very's sensibility is what makes him ; devout sensibility. It has never been excelled, perhaps never equalled. He is as near to God as anybody ever was. Fra Angelico is the only man with a gift of beauty who is like him. Mystics do not always have it. These two men are artists superadded. Puritanism did not admit of art. It chilled the blood. It had a sterner task. Milton struck his roots into Elizabethan soil. Thirty years later he would not have been Milton. Very is the least indebted, the most underived. When a poet is a poet in grain, as he was, and such winnowed fine grain, we can dispense with the flourishes. One alive to the essence and atmosphere of genius feels it the moment one reads him. One noble man, Whittier, is an instance of purely literary style, diction. Very, not an atom. His verse is gentle like the pattering of rain, purling of brooks, or chirping of robins, — voices of nature, uncon- scious, as pure, as sweet. A perfect inner voice in liter- ature, not a thought of effect. His pieces write themselves, are produced through him by the spirit. He would return from this communion and write them, — unique in our literature, secondary and derivative as it is. He is phe- nomenal, a psychologic study. The transcendental wave which lifted, left him, and he never after came to his own. A little literary gift is a wonder here and the writer generally has a cheap alliterative name. The country is full of small fry like white bait. We are children tickled with a straw. Talent shines provincially because we are all provincial, the whole country and nothing more so than New England, this little peninsula jutting out into the Atlantic and lonoinsr to join the mother country again and be tucked under her apron strings. Older nations know what genius is, we believe smartness is genius, as E. a. silsbee's remarks. 15 the French do taste. The ornament is taken for the temple. Very was the temple, no ornament, its living Avails. The trouble with ns as a people is that, like a novice trying his hand at an art, Ave think too much of the accom- plishment. We strain after effect. The English have got beyond this, come through, and are fairly lodged in maturity. Good breeding has got into literature ; orna- ment, emphasis is bad form. Repose is cultivated with knowledge and strength. Science has disciplined the world to the fact, and literature has had to drop some of its airs and vail some of its graces. We want reality having had enough of show. Picturesqueness vanished with gothic and the middle ago, but it remained for us to build a Now York and Phil- adelphia, and call streets 74th St. and 600th St. We shall soon be called 7,000 ourselves and 9906 or a 1,000,007th. At last the American people will live in one hotel stretched from Boston to San Francisco with a bar room underneath. They will be born without legs and move in horse cars. Coming home one hears buzzed in one's ears forever the rich man of the neighborhood. Once it was Girard and Astor, now Vauderbilt and Stewart. In Germany it was Goethe and Schiller when you went in and when you came out, now Bismark or Moltke. In England, Glad- stone, Dizzy, the Queen. In France some distinguished man, statesman or literary. The Englishman lives to be somebody socially, the German to know, the American to get, the Frenchman to enjoy. Nothing will ever correct this rude addiction for a hundred years or more till the continent fills in, settles down. The time will come when it will be a vulgar thing to be rich. It is now, and America is vulgar at this hour in consequence, and mate- 16 REV. JONES VERY, IN MEMOEIAM ; rial through that. "What a protest is such a nature as Very's against all this ! Everything is clone to order here. Mankind are turned out themselves, million-peopled cities and soldiers' monu- ments out of hand. Briefness is our eternity and antiq- uity. We want a short cut to heaven itself. We shall breathe by machinery at last and travel by lightning, no time to think, stock-quotations will be our poetry. The future lies between three people, the Chinaman, Jew and Yankee. I think the Jew will be the last man and that his nose will be projected on Jupiter. One day some rich man will buy out the Vatican, and the Pyramids, perhaps the Pope himself, and bring them over here, and they will be lost on the way. A woman offered to buy the Arc de Triomphe the other day, which if not true is ben trovato. We delight in bigness. Our minds are figures and might be set down in a ledger to- morrow. The countenance is commercial, shrewdness ground in, no openness, expression screwed into a cold sharpness, knit, concentrated, eyes like gimlets, a shut thin mouth, strait lips, an air like nails driven into you or files drawn over your nose, money eaten, digested and cropping out, no sensibilit}r permitted or fraternity, still less sentiment, a living on the points of a carding machine, no craving for sympathy, self-sufficing, and yet with this terrible arraignment the best natured and most generous man in the world, too easy natured to be good. Coming from Europe we seem like dried specimens pre- pared for an herbarium, in summer especially, with dusters on and banged-in hats. The revulsion is painful from the easy European who enjoys life with all his cramped opportunity. Where our scant population is, there will be another Europe with many capitals and emulation and variety of E. A. silsbee's remarks. 17 type, taste and endeavor. Now it is all trade; what would England have been all Manchester and Liverpool? We need something to temper ns. Where is it to come from? It is an embryonic country here in its oldest phase. The humanities will come hereafter. We cannot concentrate. We are always flying off at the handle. We keep green, raw-boned, unformed. In Xew England we have what has never been seen in the world before, devout free thinking. The English have come to it through science, the French through scorn, the Germans through metaphysics. The Ger- mans have deepened the thought of the world though their character is not equal to their mind, nor is their lit- erature based on it, but has grown up in a late and sophis- ticated age out of a literary class. They are intellectually free though politically bound and for that very reason, having no harmoniously developed life, social, commer- cial, and civic, all classes mixed and cooperating, are prone to the coarsest atheism, or sanctimonious, as in the French war. The French are socially free and equal though religiously bound and now working out of despot- ism. The English how socially bound ! — and we by trade, and in a sense both, religiously. England is a preserve of gentlemen, this the country of mankind. Our greatest production is public characters which are the most straightforward, the best the world has seen, Washington, Franklin, Lincoln, the saviour of democ- racy. We cannot be diplomatic in this young land. The American is transparent and has taught the world simplicity, cured it of tortuousness, artificiality and stilt- edness. For passion let me quote Wordsworth's lines on "Lon- don Bridge," the commonest si