It was with reluctance that we at last turned our faces homeward, and bade the excellent director farewell. The world has seen, in this nineteenth century, few nobler spirits than his. Possessed of uncommon intellect, he combines with it executive talent of no ordinary character, and a capacity for labor which seems almost fabulous. His duties as the head of the Inner Mission, whose scope comprises the organization and management of reformatory institutions of all kinds, throughout Germany, as well as efforts analogous to those of our city missions, temperance societies, etc., might well be supposed to be sufficient for one man; but these are supplementary to his labors as director of the Rauhe Haus, and editor of the Fliegende Blätter, and the other literature, by no means inconsiderable, of the Inner Mission. Dr. Wichern is highly esteemed and possesses almost unbounded influence throughout Germany; and that influence, potent as it is, even with the princes and crowned heads of the German States, is uniformly exerted in behalf of the poor, the unfortunate, the ignorant, and the degraded. When the history of philanthropy shall be written, and the just meed of commendation bestowed on the benefactors of humanity, how much more exalted a place will he receive, in the memory and gratitude of the world, than the perjured and audacious despot who, born the same year, in the neighboring city of the Hague, has won his way to the throne of France by deeds of selfishness and cruelty! Even to-day, who would not rather be John Henry Wichern, the director of the Rauhe Haus at Horn, than Louis Napoleon, emperor of France?
Would that on our own side of the Atlantic a Wichern might arise, whose abilities should be sufficient to unite in one common purpose our reformatory enterprises, and rescue from infamy and sin the tens of thousands of children who now, apt scholars in crime, throng the purlieus of vice in our large cities, and are already committing deeds whose desperate wickedness might well cause hardened criminals to shudder. The existence of a popular government depends, we are often told, upon the intelligence and virtue of the people. What hope, then, can we have of the perpetuity of our institutions, when those who are to control them have become monsters of iniquity ere they have reached the age of manhood?
The forces of Good and Evil are ever striving for the mastery in human society. Happy is that philanthropist, and honored should he be with a nation's gratitude, who can rescue these juvenile offenders from the power of evil, and from the fearful suggestings of temptation and want, and enlist them on the side of virtue and right! We rear monuments of marble and bronze to those heroes who on the battle-field and in the fierce assault have kept our nation's fame untarnished, and added new laurels to the renown of our country's prowess; but more enduring than marble, more lasting than brass, should be the monument reared to him who, in the fierce contest with the powers of evil, shall rescue the soul of the child from the grasp of the tempter, and change the brutalized and degraded offspring of crime and lust into a youth of generous, active, and noble impulses. But though earthly fame may be denied to such a benefactor of his race, his record shall be on high; and at that grand assize where all human actions shall be weighed, His voice, whose philanthropy exceeded, infinitely, the noblest deeds of benevolence of the sons of earth, shall be heard, saying to these humble laborers in the vineyard of our God, "Friends, come up higher!"
Those who are interested in knowing what has been accomplished by the reformatory institutions of Europe will find a full and entertaining account of most of them in a volume recently published, entitled "Papers on Preventive, Correctional, and Reformatory Institutions and Agencies in Different Countries," by Henry Barnard, LL.D. Hartford: F.C. Brownell, 1857. Dr. Barnard has done a good work in collecting these valuable documents.
BEAUTY.
Fond lover of the Ideal Fair,
My soul, eluded everywhere,
Is lapsed into a sweet despair.
Perpetual pilgrim, seeking ever,
Baffled, enamored, finding never;
Each morn the cheerful chase renewing,
Misled, bewildered, still pursuing;
Not all my lavished years have bought
One steadfast smile from her I sought,
But sidelong glances, glimpsing light,
A something far too fine for sight,
Veiled voices, far off thridding strains,
And precious agonies and pains:
Not love, but only love's dear wound
And exquisite unrest I found.
At early morn I saw her pass
The lone lake's blurred and quivering glass;
Her trailing veil of amber mist
The unbending beaded clover kissed;
And straight I hasted to waylay
Her coming by the willowy way;—
But, swift companion of the Dawn,
She left her footprints on the lawn,
And, in arriving, she was gone.
Alert I ranged the winding shore;
Her luminous presence flashed before;
The wild-rose and the daisies wet
From her light touch were trembling yet;
Faint smiled the conscious violet;
Each bush and brier and rock betrayed
Some tender sign her parting made;
And when far on her flight I tracked
To where the thunderous cataract
O'er walls of foamy ledges broke,
She vanished in the vapory smoke.
To-night I pace this pallid floor,
The sparkling waves curl up the shore,
The August moon is flushed and full;
The soft, low winds, the liquid lull,
The whited, silent, misty realm,
The wan-blue heaven, each ghostly elm,
All these, her ministers, conspire
To fill my bosom with the fire
And sweet delirium of desire.
Enchantress! leave thy sheeny height,
Descend, be all mine own this night,
Transfuse, enfold, entrance me quite!
Or break thy spell, my heart restore,
And disenchant me evermore!
* * * * *