was required to revise it, and free the whole people from this Arachne's coil that had bound them so long; was especially needed to extricate the rulers themselves from its meshes, and to rescue the rights thus imperilled by unscrupulous placemen who shrunk from the task. These could not help them, caught in the same snare that bound the nation. "Neither the law, nor the Constitution, nor the whole system of American institutions," they were told, "ever had contemplated a case as likely to arise under our system in which a resort would be necessary to provide outside of the law and Constitution for amending the Constitution." The case arose, nevertheless, and was provided for by these powerful agitators, and by the progress of events. The late civil outbreak compelled the necessary amendments, sweeping the compromises, the slave Congress and territory from the statute books and the country itself.

"Principles like fountains flow round forever,

Being in a state of perpetual agitation."

"To all new truths, all renovations of old truths," says Coleridge, "it must be as in the ark between the destroyed and the about-to-be-renovated world. The raven must be sent out before the dove, and ominous controversy must precede peace and the olive wreath."

GREELEY.

Of political editors, next to Garrison, perhaps Horace Greeley was the most efficient in furthering this national result; and by his eminent services in various depart

ments of activity comes nearest to being the people's man, the best representative of character indigenous to New England, or more properly America-like Beecher and Phillips. His power appears to lie in his strong understanding, abundant information, plain statement of his facts, freed from all rhetorical embellishment. A rustic Franklin in his direct way of putting his things before his auditor, he makes plain his meaning in spite of his utter want of all graces of person, or of oratory, handling his subject as a rude farmer his axe and crowbar. There is about him a homely charm of goodnature, a child-like candor, that have all the effect of eloquence, elevating him for the time into the subject he treats. In the statistics of things, practical and political, he is a kind of living encyclopedia of information, and as his chief distinction has made the newspaper a power it had not been before.

May we not credit New England with giving the country these new Instrumentalities for Progress, viz. :

Greeley, the Newspaper;

Garrison, a free Platform;
Phillips, a free Convention;
Beecher, a free Pulpit;

Emerson, the Lecture?

The Conversation awaits being added to the list.

AGE OF IRON AND BRONZE.

FRIDAY, 9.

URS can hardly claim to be the Golden Age, but

OURS

of Bronze and Iron rather. If ideas are in the ascendant, still mind is fettered by mechanism. We scale the heavens to grade the spaces.

Messrs. Capital

& Co. transact our business for us the globe over. Was it in the Empire News that I read the company's advertisement for supplying mankind with gas at a penny per diem annually? And then, proceeding to say, "that considering the old-time monopoly in the heavenly luminary, the corporation has constructed at fabulous cost their Brazen Cope to shut down upon the horizon at day-break punctually, and so graduate to each customer's tube his just allowance, else darkness for delinquents the year round."

Certainly a splendid conception for distributing sunbeams by the Globe Corporation if the solar partner consent to the speculation. Had Hesiod the enterprise in mind when he sung,

"Seek virtue first, and after virtue, coin"?

Or St. Paul, when writing concerning labor and capital: "For I would not," he says, "that other men should be eased and you burdened, but by an equality that now at the time your abundance may be a supply for their want, that their abundance may also be a

supply for your want, that there may be an equality, as it is written, He that had gathered much, had nothing over, and he that had gathered little, had no lack. If any man will not work, neither should he eat."

Any attempt to simplify and supply one's wants by abstinence and self-help is in the most hopeful direction, and serviceable to the individual whether his experiment succeed or not, the practice of most, from the beginning, having been to multiply rather than diminish one's natural wants, and thus to become poor at the cost of becoming rich. "Who has the fewest wants," said Socrates, "is most like God."

"Who wishes, wants, and whoso wants is poor."

Our "Fruitlands" was an adventure undertaken in good faith for planting a Family Order here in New England, in hopes of enjoying a pastoral life with a few devoted men and women, smitten with sentiments of the old heroism and love of holiness and of humanity. But none of us were prepared to actualize practically the ideal life of which we dreamed. So we fell apart, some returning to the established ways, some soured by the trial, others postponing the fulfilment of his dream to a more propitious future.*

* "FRUITLANDS.

"We have received a communication from Messrs. Alcott and Lane, dated from their farm, Fruitlands, in Harvard, Massachusetts, from which we make the following extract:

"We have made an arrangement with the proprietor of an estate of about a hundred acres, which liberates this tract from human ownership. For

I certainly esteem it an inestimable privilege to have been bred to outdoor labors, the use of tools, and to find myself the owner of a garden, with the advantage of laboring sometimes besides my faithful Irishman, and compare views of men and things with him. I think myself the greater gainer of the two by this intercourse. Unbiassed by books, and looking at things as they stand related to his senses and simple needs, I learn naturally what otherwise I should not have known so well, if at all. The sympathy and sincerity are the best part of it. One sees the more clearly his social relations and duties; sees the need of

picturesque beauty, both in the near and the distant landscape, the spot has few rivals. A semicircle of undulating hills stretches from south to west, among which the Wachusett and Monadnock are conspicuous. The vale, through which flows a tributary to the Nashua, is esteemed for its fertility and ease of cultivation, is adorned with groves of nut trees, maples, and pines, and watered by small streams. Distant not thirty miles from the metropolis of New England, this reserve lies in a serene and sequestered dell. No public thoroughfare invades it, but it is entered by a private road. The nearest hamlet is that of Stillriver, a field's walk of twenty minutes, and the village of Harvard is reached by circuitous and hilly roads of nearly three miles.

"Here we prosecute our effort to initiate a Family in harmony with the primitive instincts in man. The present buildings being ill placed and unsightly as well as inconvenient, are to be temporarily used, until suitable and tasteful buildings in harmony with the natural scene can be completed. An excellent site offers itself on the skirts of the nearest wood, affording shade and shelter, and commanding a view of the lands of the estate, nearly all of which are capable of spade culture. It is intended to adorn the pas tures with orchards, and to supersede ultimately the labor of the plough and cattle, by the spade and the pruning-knife.

"Our planting and other works, both without and within doors, are already in active progress. The present Family numbers ten individuals, five