Perhaps no recent story has caused more comment among the young than Mrs. Burnett’s “Through One Administration,” recently finished in The Century. The story follows the modern plan of leaving hero and heroine in a hopeless, helpless state, and to all appearances perpetually so. There can be no question about both the artistic and moral value of such a finale. It is inartistic because unfinished; immoral in influence because it leaves the impression that the great end of life is human love, and that lost, all is lost. We contend that the story is incomplete. The whole plan of life, the teaching of individual and national history, is that one thing taken from life another will be found to fill the want. To teach through the medium of the novel, and especially a novel so well written and captivating as Mrs. Burnett’s always are, that the end is misery, is a wrong to the young, and an argument against the school of novelists to which this writer belongs.
Peter Cooper died in New York City on the 4th of April, in his ninety-third year. Not since the death of Lincoln has the city witnessed such general mourning. He has been a man of great business ability, of mechanical skill, of the broadest philanthropy. His business transactions have been marked by the strictest integrity, his philanthropy by unostentation. The greatest work of his life has been the Cooper Union, where, free of cost, the poor may obtain instruction in industrial arts. To this great institution he gave $1,592,192, and quite as important, the best thought and plans of his teeming brain. One can only appreciate the wide-spread benefit of the Union when they know that 40,000 men and women have been fitted there for lives of usefulness, and free of cost. His life and character were above reproach, and present a type of what an American man should be,—energetic and successful, yet simple, kindly, and noble.
The late Gustave Doré frequently compared his head to “a witch’s cauldron, always boiling and shooting up blue flames.” Anybody who studies his illustrations of “Dante’s Inferno,” and “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner,” will be likely to agree with him, yet he was the great genius among artists of his times.
John G. Whittier says that he is still one of those who hope that the dreadful evil of intemperance may be checked, and finally abolished, by legislative action. He believes in the right and duty of the community to protect itself by legal enactments, whenever there is a public sentiment strong enough to enforce the prohibition of the liquor traffic. “I despair of any direct assistance from politicians,” he writes, “but the great majority of the individuals composing these parties have a moral sense that may be awakened into action by precept and example.” Looking at the drinking habits of New Englanders sixty years ago, and at the general temperance among them at the present day, he sees reason for the greatest encouragement.
The following items belong to Dr. Vincent’s page, C. L. S. C. Work, but were received too late for insertion in their proper place: