There is a bad type of independence in politics. It is that whose shape is made by personal malignity, and whose method is slander and vituperation. Just at this season this sort of independence is noisy. It is a kind of politics which should have little influence.
A recent writing criticises the wealthy men of the country for negligence in the matter of making their wealth minister to philanthropy. Probably most of our millionaires are too busy to see the point, but the point is sharp and will stick in the world’s remembrance of many of them. The only moral justification for holding a large property is philanthropic use of it. Neglect of the kind mentioned breeds socialists and weakens the moral safeguards of all private property.
For two years, Mrs. Carrie B. Kilgore, a lady holding a diploma as bachelor of laws, granted her by the University of Pennsylvania, has been endeavoring to gain admittance to the bar, but has been refused, on the ground that the law was out of woman’s sphere, that it had been put there by custom, and that the aforesaid “sphere” could only be enlarged by action of the legislature. A Pennsylvania judge with a different idea has, however, been found. He declares, and very correctly: “If there is any longer any such thing as what old-fashioned philosophers and essayists used to call the sphere of woman, it must now be admitted to be a sphere with an infinite and indeterminable radius.” Mrs. Kilgore can, at last, use her hard-earned right to practice.
The late A. F. Bellows excelled in landscape, and the value of his productions has doubled since his lamented death last year. Four charming landscapes from his brush are among Prang’s forthcoming publications. They are in his happiest manner, with the tender poetic treatment that especially distinguished his work. Essentially American in feeling, his choice of subjects was always of quiet home scenes, and he is without a rival in the delineation of landscape, seeking his theme among quiet meadows and in pastoral districts, in preference to the wilder mountain views which tempt so many of our American artists. The house which is sending out this artist’s work has given us this year a large amount of very valuable productions. Their Easter cards, we remember, were unusually fine; among them the mediæval cards printed in red and black, and the prints and cards on old hand-made paper, encased in parchment paper, were the most attractive novelties.
Mr. Matthew Arnold had some unpleasant journalistic experiences in his late American trip. Flippant newspaper men punned and joked and told malicious stories about this dignified and scholarly gentleman until he has been driven to the opinion—and perhaps it is a correct one—that “mendacious personal gossip is the bane of American journalism.”