and uphold this constitution in all the integrity of its granted powers, and in the full autonomy of the states composing the Union, with our minds, our hearts, our lives-as our only assurance of peace among the states and of peace with the world; as our guaranty of free thought, free conscience, free commerce, free men, and a free continent! And as the prophetic eye of the Father of American Science greeted it in its rising, on that memorable day, so, now in its zenith and power, let us vow to perpetuate it, as the Hope of mankind in every clime and to all generations,-as the true and everlasting monument of "Liberty enlightening the world!"

J. RANDOLPH TUCKER.

ARTICLE IV.-RECENT VIEWS OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY.

THERE are few things in modern literary history more astonishing than the chorus of detraction which assailed the eighteenth century at the opening of our own era. Yet it was not the sudden unlooked-for onset it has so often been described. The nuclei of antipathy to its prevailing modes of thought and feeling began to appear towards the middle of its career,little separate, mostly unobserved centres of reaction dispersing widely in evergrowing rings. Shred by shred the old Queen Anne and Georgian life fell away or became transformed into fresher growths. All through its last decades, particularly, we stand not unlike spectators at the lens of a microscope watching the gradual evolution, so perfectly have the recent studies of the critics and men-of-letters reflected it for us.

of its art

In recognizing the gradualness of the change, however, it is important not to overlook its completeness. It was certainly a revolution, but it arose and expanded according to the laws of sequence, which are not apparently wholly uniform or traceable; and it had its period of culmination-that period when men turned upon its Alma Mater, the Goddess of Reason, and spurned her with the feet of newly roused scorn. We remember how Blake soared away from the arid regions into a world of weird and delicate phantasy of his own unassisted creation; how Burns, walking afield, filled with the blithe air of a new earth, broke into song such as had never visited even the dreams of the Augustan poets. But these twain wrought one song by dint of the inherent spontaneity of their genius; they went the whole length of revolt, but not from conscious and systematic reflection. The movement of action, of organized arraignment of the last century, and a reasoned departure from its methods and aims, the final moment of culmination-comes from the great romantic group in which the new criticism originated. We have to remember the unsparing judgment that Wordsworth brought against the

eighteenth century poetry; how judicially it was confirmed by Coleridge, coupled with a lofty rejection of its religion and metaphysics; the derisive raillery of Keats and the droll girding of Lamb. Their reaction, however, was chiefly literary. The full measure of invective, the final comprehensive word of unreason and abuse remained to be uttered-and how uttered? by the most untamed of the modern apostles of culture Among all Carlyle's exhibitions of whimsicality I know none more extraordinary, and, perhaps I should say, more painful, than his phrenzied diatribes against the eighteenth century. The attacks of romantic poets and critics were aimed against a single phase of its activity, and if severe and at times extravagant, they were at least developed generally with care, after patient analysis and with certain reservations. But the illustrious worshipper of heroes-nearly all of whom it is significant, were the children of that unspeakable epoch-embraces the entire life and achievement of the century in the thunderstorm of his wrath. "It is the age," growls old Teufelsdrockh, who is the type of the modern Truth-seeker, "it is the age of prose, of lying, of sham, the peculiar era of cant." "The embodiment," Carlyle declares in his own person, "of Frivolity, Formalism, and Commonplace, an effete world; wherein Wonder, Greatness, Godhood, could not dwell." One would have thought, after this, that the fountains of uttermost disparagement were exhausted, but reinforcements sprung up from an unexpected quarter. In religious sentiment Carlyle and Newman, and Mill and Newman in logic, stand at the antipodes of each other, yet it was by Newman and the AngloCatholics that the next blow was struck, when discarding the ultra-Protestantism of the last century, they expunged the epoch of Wesley and Whitfield from the church calendar; and by Mill that its force was carried on and employed to overturn the relicts of the old philosophy.

A more moderate and favorable estimate was in the meantime growing up and very slowly winning its way. Thackeray was perhaps the first English man-of-letters (Byron always clung to the art of Pope and Gifford) who recoiled from the critical position of the Lakists, the first to look back upon the near past genially, with a smile for its defects and a keen and

even sympathetic appreciation of its excellences, many of which at least, in its fiction, were cousin germane to his own. And then came George Eliot and Mr. Froude, the one with her richly colored pictures of the midland rural life of the Georges' time, and the other with his brilliant historic sketches and their plea for the superiority of the last century over the present one. This estimate was abundantly borne out and illustrated subsequently by the historian Lecky, Leslie Stephens, Mrs. Oliphant, Charles de Remusat, and others. Still more recently, however, a new school of criticism has appeared which, in defending the eighteenth century from the calumnies of the earlier writers, has left far behind the negative and objective attitude of Thackeray and George Eliot. They have undertaken to rehabilitate the preceding century, to set it in a new light, to set forth its supremacy in many matters. Conspicuous in this collective effort are the expository labors of the late Karl Hillebrand, Frederick Harrison, and Mr. Edmund Gosse. To the versatile German critic, whose exposition of the defects of the Popan classicality is the most penetrating and complete we possess, the eighteenth century is the "most truly human and fruitful of all the ages." In an admirable review of its character, he undertakes to show that "the political, religious, and literary" development of England was never " in a more active, and consequently in a more fruitful condition than during this age of supposed torpor."* This comprehensive panegyric was supported a few years later by the brilliant apostle of positivism. "In achievement," Mr. Harrison declares this much decried epoch to have been, "the equal of any century since the middle ages." "Of all eras," he says again, with his trumpet tone, "the richest, most various, most creative." Above all, if we seek for its trait of distinction among other times, it is emphatically "the humane age." These conclusions, it is only just to say, are based on the results of recent historic research, and particularly on the full and exact studies of the eighteenth century life and literature which Mr. Lecky and Leslie Stephens have given to the world. Taken collectively, they constitute what may very fairly be termed a revolution in the manner of regarding the last century. The mis

*The Contemporary, January, 1880.

carriage of justice in the previous school of criticism is more than atoned for by this new birth and reconstruction of opinion. But if it metes out simple justice and not eulogy, if it is a timely and deeply-needed reparation, it cannot notwithstanding be extended to cover all departments of activity. The reparative tendency took one step too far, and that in a single direction to which I shall presently refer.

Every one who has followed the beaten path of historical criticism will be perfectly willing to admit the general justice of Karl Hillebrand and Mr. Harrison's views of the eighteenth century. In science and in industry the age reached admirable results, far surpassing the preceding century. But these have their roots in the structure of the understanding. The acces sions it made to the growth of English prose, the admirable perfection its best style attained in simplicity, directness, and flexibility, have often been pointed out. It is impossible to deny the greatness of the fiction it gave to the world in such unrivalled profusion; the modern novel and romance have no doubt penetrated profounder depths and developed a far finer and subtler art, but in their variety and freedom, in their abundant humor, in their large and powerful picturing of English life and manners, these old novelists easily command a whole realm of their own creation. It was the period when English literature was enriched with a succulent store of wit and satire—the wit of Pope and Goldsmith, the satire of Swift and Addison and Gifford. It is impossible not to be struck with the invariable presence of taste, a taste for the morals, for the didactic poetry, and philosophical tales of the day, a taste for correctness, precision in expression, a taste for solid fact and for satire, a taste polished and academic within its restricted sphere. We know it finally, as an age alert and fruitful in criticism. Few literary eras have been more so. The spirit of inquiry and analysis was keen in both philosophy and scholarship, exploring certain provinces of thought with great acumen, organizing sciences, defining systems of belief.

When, however, we turn to this age so active in production and criticism, and ask what the best minds thought and felt about these things which are precious to us now, which form an integral part of our mental and emotional life, the pure