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itants are visions of nobleness, sweetness, and grace, moving to an ethereal melody and the pert and humble spirit of mirth; sometimes of historic magnificence and solidity, where the high deeds of statesmen and warriors are transacted, amid crowds of courtiers, a pomp of banners, and the triumph-shouts or the death-wails of struggling nations; sometimes of weird and supernatural awfulness, tragic heroes and demigods contending against inexorable fate with rain and wind and fire and tempests as their ministers,--an ideal world truly, but a real world in this, that in every case it must be a moral world, as deep in its foundations of principle, as positive in its affirmations of law, as any more sensible world may be supposed to shadow forth. Dealing with what is the whole subject-matter of all moral science-human character and conduct-the drama, by its very nature and whatever may be its immediate constituents, lives and moves and has its being in an ethical element. It confronts not merely the every-day questions of right and wrong, but the mysterious problems of good and evil which perplex inquiry and strike every utterance dumb. "We English," says an English writer, "excepting in the works of Milton, who drew from Revelation, can show no exposition of a moral theory equal to that of Æschylus, who drew from nature"; and an American writer asks, "Wherein is Shakespeare the greatest of authors?" answering, "Not in the perfection of his form, nor in his mastery of language, nor in the beauty of his images, nor even in his characterization, great as were his excellences in all these respects; no-his unique and surpassing greatness lies in his comprehension of the moral order of the world." We might add, too, that his exposition of that order is more swift, compact, concentrated, impressive, and at times terrible, than any we get elsewhere. In our actual experiences, "the whirligig of time" is often laggard in its revenges; the retributions of history, which are said to vindicate eternal justice, are ticked off by the slow clocks of the centuries; and a remote and innocent hereafter only hears the solemn toll of the judgment bells. But dramatic genius, annihilating the limitation of time and space, frames the seasons of its own harvest; hangs its Nemesis on the necks of events and freights the very flash of its auguries with the rattling thunder peals of their execution.

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Evert Augustus Duyckinck.

BORN in New York, N. Y., 1816. DIED there, 1878.

WASHINGTON IRVING.

[Portrait Gallery of Eminent Men and Women. 1873.]

HE life of Washington Irving was so truthful, so simple, so easily

THE

to be read by all men, that few words are needed for an analysis of his character. He was primarily a man of genius-that is, nature had given him a faculty of doing what no one else could do precisely, and doing it well. His talent was no doubt improved by skill and exercise; but we see it working in his earliest books, when he could scarcely have dreamt of becoming an author. Indeed, he was thrown upon authorship apparently by accident; a lucky shipwreck of his fortunes, as it proved, for the world. In this faculty, which he possessed better than anybody else in America, the most important ingredient was humor-a kindly perception of life, not unconscious of its weaknesses, tolerant of its frailties, capable of throwing a beam of sunshine into the darkness of its misfortunes. The heart was evidently his logician; a pure life his best instructor. He loved literature, but not at the expense of society. Though his writings were fed by many secret rills, flowing from the elder worthies, the best source of his inspiration was daily life. He was always true to its commonest, most real emotions.

man.

In all his personal intercourse with others, in every relation of life, Mr. Irving, in an eminent degree, exhibited the qualities of the gentleThey were principles of thought and action, in the old definition of Sir Philip Sidney, "seated in a heart of courtesy." His manners, while they were characterized by the highest refinement, were simple to a degree. His habits of living were plain, though not homely: everything about him displayed good taste, and an expense not below the standard of his fortunes; but there was no ostentation. No man stood more open to new impressions. His sensibility was excited by everything noble or generous, and, we may add, anything which displayed humor of character, from whatever sphere of life the example was drawn. His genius responded to every honest touch of nature in literature or art. He was a man of feeling, with the sympathies of a Mackenzie or a Goldsmith. Nor did these emotions, with him, rest only in the luxuries of sentiment. He was a practical guide, counsellor and friend; and his benevolence was not confined to this charmed circle of home and neighborhood. In public affairs, though unfitted for the duties of the working politician, his course was independent and patriotic. No heart beat.

warmer in love of country and the Union, and the honor of his nation's flag. This is worth mentioning in his case, for his tastes and studies led him to retirement; but he did not suffer it to be an inglorious ease, to which higher ends should be sacrificed.

Elizabeth Cady Stanton.

BORN in Johnstown, N. Y., 1816.

A PLEA FOR WOMAN SUFFRAGE.

[From Address at Woman Suffrage Convention, Washington, 1868.-History of Woman Suffrage. 1881-82.]

I

URGE a Sixteenth Amendment, because "manhood suffrage," or a man's government, is civil, religious, and social disorganization. The male element is a destructive force, stern, selfish, aggrandizing, loving war, violence, conquest, acquisition, breeding in the material and moral world alike discord, disorder, disease, and death. See what a record of blood and cruelty the pages of history reveal! Through what slavery, slaughter, and sacrifice, through what inquisitions and imprisonments, pains and persecutions, black codes and gloomy creeds, the soul of humanity has struggled for the centuries, while mercy has veiled her face and all hearts have been dead alike to love and hope! The male element has held high carnival thus far; it has fairly run riot from the beginning, overpowering the feminine element everywhere, crushing out all the diviner qualities in human nature, until we know but little of true manhood and womanhood, of the latter comparatively nothing, for it has scarce been recognized as a power until within the last century. Society is but the reflection of man himself, untempered by woman's thought; the hard iron rule we feel alike in the church, the state, and the home. No one need wonder at the disorganization, at the fragmentary condition of everything, when we remember that man, who represents but half a complete being, with but half an idea on every subject, has undertaken the absolute control of all sublunary matters.

People object to the demands of those whom they choose to call the strong-minded, because they say, "the right of suffrage will make the women masculine." That is just the difficulty in which we are involved to-day. Though disfranchised, we have few women in the best sense; we have simply so many reflections, varieties, and dilutions of the masculine gender. The strong, natural characteristics of womanhood are repressed

and ignored in dependence, for so long as man feeds woman she will try to please the giver and adapt herself to his condition. To keep a foothold in society, woman must be as near like man as possible, reflect his ideas, opinions, virtues, motives, prejudices, and vices. She must respect his statutes, though they strip her of every inalienable right, and conflict with that higher law written by the finger of God on her own soul. ·

She must look at everything from its dollar-and-cent point of view, or she is a mere romancer. She must accept things as they are and make the best of them. To mourn over the miseries of others, the poverty of the poor, their hardships in jails, prisons, asylums, the horrors of war, cruelty, and brutality in every form, all this would be mere sentimentalizing. To protest against the intrigue, bribery, and corruption of public life, to desire that her sons might follow some business that did not involve lying, cheating, and a hard, grinding selfishness, would be arrant nonsense. In this way man has been moulding woman to his ideas by direct and positive influences, while she, if not a negation, has used indirect means to control him, and in most cases developed the very characteristics both in him and herself that needed repression. And now man himself stands appalled at the results of his own excesses, and mourns in bitterness that falsehood, selfishness and violence are the law of life. The need of this hour is not territory, gold-mines, railroads, or specie payments, but a new evangel of womanhood, to exalt purity, virtue, morality, true religion, to lift man up into the higher realms of thought and action.

We ask woman's enfranchisement, as the first step toward the recognition of that essential element in government that can only secure the health, strength, and prosperity of the nation. Whatever is done to lift woman to her true position will help to usher in a new day of peace and perfection for the race. In speaking of the masculine element, I do not wish to be understood to say that all men are hard, selfish, and brutal, for many of the most beautiful spirits the world has known have been. clothed with manhood; but I refer to those characteristics, though often marked in woman, that distinguish what is called the stronger sex. For example, the love of acquisition and conquest, the very pioneers of civilization, when expended on the earth, the sea, the elements, the riches and forces of nature, are powers of destruction when used to subjugate one man to another or to sacrifice nations to ambition. Here that great conservator of woman's love, if permitted to assert itself, as it naturally would in freedom against oppression, violence, and war, would hold all these destructive forces in check, for woman knows the cost of life better than man does, and not with her consent would one drop of blood ever be shed, one life sacrificed in vain. With violence and disturbance in the natural world, we see a constant effort to maintain an equilibrium of

forces. Nature, like a loving mother, is ever trying to keep land and sea, mountain and valley, each in its place, to hush the angry winds and waves, balance the extremes of heat and cold, of rain and drought, that peace, harmony, and beauty may reign supreme. There is a striking analogy between matter and mind, and the present disorganization of society warns us that in the dethronement of woman we have let loose the elements of violence and ruin that she only has the power to curb. If the civilization of the age calls for an extension of the suffrage, surely a government of the most virtuous educated men and women would better represent the whole and protect, the interests of all than could the representation of either sex alone.

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