either Maria Edgeworth or her father thought the best is that famous story of a man writing a letter as follows: "My dear friend, I would write you in detail, more minutely, if there was not an impudent fellow looking over my shoulder, reading every word." ("No, you lie: I've not read a word you have written!") This is an Irish bull, still it is a very old one. It is only two hundred and fifty years older than the New Testament. Horace Walpole dissented from Richard Lovell Edgeworth, and thought the other Irish bull was the best,-of the man who said, "I would have been a very handsome man, but they changed me in the cradle." That comes from Don Quixote, and is Spanish; but Cervantes borrowed it from the Greek in the fourth century, and the Greek stole it from the Egyptian hundreds of years back.

There is one story which it is said Washington has related, of a man who went into an inn, and asked for a glass of drink from the landlord, who pushed forward a wineglass about half the usual size; the tea-cups also in that day were not more than half the present size. The landlord said, "That glass out of which you are drinking is forty years old.”"Well," said the thirsty traveller, contemplating its diminutive proportions, "I think it is the smallest thing of its age I ever saw." That story as told is given as a story of Athens three hundred and seventyfive years before Christ was born. Why! all these Irish bulls are Greek, -every one of them. Take the Irishman who carried around a brick as a specimen of the house he had to sell; take the Irishman who shut his eyes, and looked into the glass to see how he would look when he was dead; take the Irishman that bought a crow, alleging that crows were reported to live two hundred years, and he meant to set out and try it; take the Irishman who met a friend who said to him, "Why, sir, I heard you were dead."-"Well," says the man, "I suppose you see I'm not."Oh, no!" says he, "I would believe the man who told me a good deal quicker than I would you." Well, those are all Greek. A score or more of them, of the parallel character, come from Athens.

Our old Boston patriots felt that tarring and feathering a Tory was a genuine patent Yankee fire-brand,-Yankeeism. They little imagined that when Richard Coeur de Lion set out on one of his crusades, among the orders he issued to his camp of soldiers was, that any one who robbed a hen-roost should be tarred and feathered. Many a man who lived in Connecticut has repeated the story of taking children to the limits of the town, and giving them a sound thrashing to enforce their memory of the spot. But the Burgundians in France, in a law now eleven hundred years old, attributed valor to the East of France because it had a law that the children should be taken to the limits of the district, and there soundly whipped, in order that they might forever remember where the limits came.

In Boston, lately, we have moved the Pelham Hotel, weighing fifty thousand tons, fourteen feet, and are very proud of it; and since then we have moved a whole block of houses twenty-three feet, and I have no doubt we will write a book about it: but there is a book telling how Domenico Fontana of the sixteenth century set up the Egyptian obelisk at Rome on end, in the Papacy of Sixtus V. Wonderful! Yet the Egyptians quarried that stone, and carried it a hundred and fifty miles, and the Romans brought it seven hundred and fifty miles, and never said a word about it. Mr. Batterson of Hartford, walking with Brunel, the architect of the Thames tunnel, in Egypt, asked him what he thought of the mechanical power of the Egyptians; and he said, "There is Pompey's Pillar: it is a hundred feet high, and the capital weighs two thousand pounds. It is something of a feat to hang two thousand pounds at that height in the air, and the few men that can do it would better discuss Egyptian mechanics."

Take canals. The Suez Canal absorbs half its receipts in cleaning out the sand which fills it continually, and it is not yet known whether it is a pecuniary success. The ancients built a canal at right angles to ours; because they knew it would not fill up if built in that direction, and they knew such an one as ours would. There were magnificent canals in the land of the Jews, with perfectly arranged gates and sluices. We have only just begun to understand ventilation properly for our houses; yet late experiments at the Pyramids in Egypt show that those Egyptian tombs were ventilated in the most perfect and scientific manner.

Again cement is modern, for the ancients dressed and joined their stones so closely, that, in buildings thousands of years old, the thin blade of a penknife cannot be forced between them. The railroad dates back to Egypt. Arago has claimed that they had a knowledge of steam. A painting has been discovered of a ship full of machinery, and a French engineer said that the arrangement of this machinery could only be accounted for by supposing the motive power to have been steam. Bramah acknowledges that he took the idea of his celebrated lock from an ancient Egyptian pattern. De Tocqueville says there was no social question that was not discussed to rags in Egypt.

"Well," say you, "Franklin invented the lightning-rod." I have no doubt he did; but years before his invention, and before muskets were invented, the old soldiers on guard on the towers used Franklin's invention to keep guard with; and if a spark passed between them and the spear-head, they ran and bore the warning of the state and condition of affairs. After that you will admit that Benjamin Franklin was not the only one that knew of the presence of electricity, and the advantages derived from its use. Solomon's Temple, you will find, was situated on an exposed point of the hill: the temple was so lofty that it was often

in peril, and was guarded by a system exactly like that of Benjamin Franklin.

Well, I may tell you a little of ancient manufactures. The Duchess of Burgundy took a necklace from the neck of a mummy, and wore it to a ball given at the Tuileries; and everybody said they thought it was the newest thing there. A Hindoo princess came into court; and her father, seeing her, said, "Go home, you are not decently covered,―go home"; and she said, "Father, I have seven suits on"; but the suits were of muslin, so thin that the king could see through them. A Roman poet says, "The girl was in the poetic dress of the country." I fancy the French would be rather astonished at this. Four hundred and fifty years ago, the first spinning-machine was introduced into Europe. I have evidence to show that it made its appearance two thousand years

before.

Well, I tell you this fact to show that perhaps we don't invent just everything. Why did I think to grope in the ashes for this? Because all Egypt knew the secret, which was not the knowledge of the professor, the king, and the priest. Their knowledge won an historic privilege which separated them from and brought down the masses; and this chain was broken when Cambyses came down from Persia, and by his genius and intellect opened the gates of knowledge, thundering across Egypt, drawing out civilization from royalty and priesthood.

Such was the system which was established in Egypt of old. It was four thousand years before humanity took that subject to a proper consideration; and, when this consideration was made, civilization changed her character. Learning no longer hid in a convent, or slumbered in the palace. No! she came out, joining hands with the people, ministering and dealing with them.

We have not an astrology in the stars, serving only the kings and priests; we have an astrology serving all those around us. We have not a chemistry hidden in underground cells, striving for wealth, striving to change everything into gold. No: we have a chemistry laboring with the farmer, and digging gold out of the earth with the miner. Ah! this is the nineteenth century; and, of the hundred of things we know, I can show you ninety-nine of them which have been anticipated. It is the liberty of intellect, and a diffusion of knowledge, that has caused this anticipation.

When Gibbon finished his History of Rome, he said, "The hand will never go back upon the dial of time, when everything was hidden in fear in the dark ages." He made that boast as he stood at night in the ruins of the Corsani Palace, looking out upon the places where the monks were chanting. That vision disappeared, and there arose in its stead the Temple of Jupiter. Could he look back upon the past, he

would see nations that went up in their strength, and down to graves with fire in one hand, and iron in the other hand, before Rome was peopled, which, in their strength, were crushed in subduing civilization. But it is a very different principle that governs this land; it is one which should govern every land; it is one which this nation needs to practise this day. It is the human property: it is the divine will that any man has the right to know anything which he knows will be ser viceable to himself and to his fellow-man, and that will make art immortal if God means that it shall last.

UNDER THE FLAG.

[From a Discourse delivered in Music Hall, Boston, 21 April, 1861.—Speeches, Lectures, and Letters. 1863.]

MAN

ANY times this winter, here and elsewhere, I have counselled peace,―urged, as well as I knew how, the expediency of acknowledging a Southern Confederacy, and the peaceful separation of these thirty-four States. One of the journals announces to you that I come here this morning to retract those opinions. No, not one of them! I need them all,-every word I have spoken this winter,—every act of twenty-five years of my life, to make the welcome I give this war hearty and hot. Civil war is a momentous evil. It needs the soundest, most solemn justification. I rejoice before God to-day for every word that I have spoken counselling peace; but I rejoice also with an especially profound gratitude, that now, the first time in my anti-slavery life, I speak under the stars and stripes, and welcome the tread of Massachusetts men marshalled for war. No matter what the past has been or said; to-day the slave asks God for a sight of this banner, and counts it the pledge of his redemption. Hitherto it may have meant what you thought, or what I did; to-day it represents sovereignty and justice. The only mistake that I have made was in supposing Massachusetts wholly choked with cotton-dust and cankered with gold. The South thought her patience and generous willingness for peace were cowardice; to-day shows the mistake. She has been sleeping on her arms since '83, and the first cannon-shot brings her to her feet with the war-cry of the Revolution on her lips. Any man who loves either liberty or manhood must rejoice at such an hour.

Every public meeting in Athens was opened with a curse on any one who should not speak what he really thought. "I have never defiled my conscience from fear or favor to my superiors," was part of the oath

every Egyptian soul was supposed to utter in the Judgment Hall of Osiris, before admission to heaven. Let us show to-day a Christian spirit as sincere and fearless. No mobs in this hour of victory, to silence those whom events have not converted. We are strong enough to tolerate dissent. That flag which floats over press or mansion at the bidding of a mob disgraces both victor and victim.

All winter long, I have acted with that party which cried for peace. The antislavery enterprise to which I belong started with peace written on its banner. We imagined that the age of bullets was over; that the age of ideas had come; that thirty millions of people were able to take a great question, and decide it by the conflict of opinions; that, without letting the ship of state founder, we could lift four millions of men into Liberty and Justice. We thought that if your statesmen would throw away personal ambition and party watchwords, and devote themselves to the great issue, this might be accomplished. To a certain extent it has been. The North has answered to the call. Year after year, event by event, has indicated the rising education of the people, the readiness for a higher moral life, the calm, self-poised confidence in our own convictions that patiently waits-like master for a pupil-for a neighbor's conversion. The North has responded to the call of that peaceful, moral, intellectual agitation which the anti-slavery idea has initiated. Our mistake, if any, has been that we counted too much on the intelligence of the masses, on the honesty and wisdom of statesmen as a class. Perhaps we did not give weight enough to the fact we saw, that this nation is made up of different ages; not homogeneous, but a mixed mass of different centuries. The North thinks,-can appreciate argument,-is the nineteenth century,-hardly any struggle left in it but that between the working class and the money-kings. The South dreams,-it is the thirteenth and fourteenth century,-baron and serf,-noble and slave. Jack Cade and Wat Tyler loom over its horizon, and the serf, rising, calls for another Thierry to record his struggle. There the fagot still burns which the Doctors of the Sorbonne called, ages ago, "the best light to guide the erring." There men are tortured for opinions, the only punishment the Jesuits were willing their pupils should look on. This is, perhaps, too flattering a picture of the South. Better call her, as Sumner does, "the Barbarous States." Our struggle, therefore, is between barbarism and civilization. Such can only be settled by arms. The government has waited until its best friends almost suspected its courage or its integrity; but the cannon shot against Fort Sumter has opened the only door out of this hour. There were but two. compromise; the other was battle. the other was battle. The integrity of the North closed the first; the generous forbearance of nineteen States closed the other. The South opened this with cannon-shot, and Lincoln shows himself at

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