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effects are produced upon the style by too great concession on the part of the orator; if, ignoring his idea and his own personality, he busies himself only with his hearer's relations and preferences, in order to say something which will be appropriate and of good tendency; this is a low ambition which seeks perishable praise and not the true and imperishable glory of ennobling the nature of men; an orator who is chiefly led by such an impulse will often melt his hearers into weak sentiment, but will never kindle them into a true moral passion, for the glance of ideal truth by which alone this sentiment is to be reached, never breaks through the inclosures with which he surrounds it. Thus three wrong courses are indicated; that is, either becoming engrossed with one's self, or with the idea, or with the relations of the hearer exclusively; whenever a discourse claiming to be rhetorical inclines decidedly in one of these three directions, it is inappropriate and powerless. order therefore to speak with entire propriety, the orator should so comprehend, combine, and mediate among the three diverse claims which his own personality, the idea, and the relation of his hearers make upon him, that each one of these demands would be satisfied without loss to either of the others; and this is conclusively nothing else than what is indispensable to a really virtuous transaction, in which a clear, continuous sense of our own personality, of the principle according to which, and the relations in which, we act, is absolutely requisite. The solution of this problem requires really great energy of character in rhetorical as well as in moral acts; and how justly they may be considered as of the same nature, appears in the fact that both the discourses, which are excellent in this respect, as also truly virtuous actions, are distinguished by no outward glare and brilliancy; for here, where three different elements are blended, their colors melt into each other; on the contrary, those faulty discourses, for the very reason that one of these elements appears prominent above the rest, let them but be composed with a little talent, may very readily possess a certain brilliancy, an object of admiration with the unintelligent, but which warms neither him nor any one besides.

Demosthenes, in this connection, deserves the highest praise with the least blame; for surely never an orator united with such a dignified assertion of his own personality, such a luminous development of his idea, and such a comprehensive view of the existing relations. And it is from this sustained combination of these three elements that his powerful and profoundly attractive simplicity arose; which would have disappeared the moment a separation of the lyric and philosophic parts from the matters of fact had taken place in his discourse. On the other hand, Cicero is far less deserving of the rank of a model of appropriateness; not as though he elevated himself above the comprehension of his hearers or uttered any thing unsuitable and violent; but because with him, now his personality, now the truth, and now the circumstances become too prominent, and the element at any time preponderating invariably throws the others into the shade. By this very failing he is found to possess a more showy coloring than Demosthenes, and can be understood, in the general, with far less effort and pains to penetrate the relations of his times.

Without in the least intending to compare Massillon with Demosthenes, or Bossuet with Cicero, they have these points of similarity: Massilon, like the Greek orator, without giving up himself or his idea, placed before his eyes in the fullest manner the life of his hearers; on the contrary, Bossuet, and indeed (as I suspect) on account of an inferior purity of character, almost entirely overlooked this last consideration. Hence men were carried away by Massilon and forgot to admire him, the best praise an orator can receive; on the contrary, Bossuet in his sublimest flights can only excite a cold admiration, or at most a ferment of the imaginative powers, entirely useless for moral ends. If, moreover, the French themselves almost universally prefer Bossuet to Massilon, this only shows, what appears from many other decisions of their critics, how little they understand and appreciate what of real excellence they have among them.

OUR EXODUS FROM JERICHO.

A RAZORIAL RHAPSODY.

"HAIR."-Ben Jonson.

"BEARD."-Shakespeare.

"DON MUSTACHIOS."-The Spaniard.

THE HE news of the day is not one of the recognized departments of "Putnam's Monthly," but there is one local fact so striking so patent, in the face and under the eyes of the people, that we step aside to make it History.

So some fat band-leader, hidden by his trombone-oblivious as to his bootsreckless as to his path-purple as to his face, and puffed out as to his cheeks to such extent that his beard looks straggling; will sometimes intermit his professional labors, to give-perhaps a glance at his following-perhaps a moment to his handkerchief-perhaps a turn to his perched-up music-book-perhaps an unexpected attention to some too prominent vocal and personal imitator among the urchins, and then fall back to his spasmodic sound-volcano, as if his tortured lips had never before quitted the sonorous metal since they were transferred from the maternal bosom.

Be it known then, that this instant month of March, 1854,-the time of gestation of the current number of "Putnam's Monthly;" to wit, Number XVI,-is to be known for all time, and noted by all future Valentines, as the month of incipient mustachios! One half the men you meet in New-York to-day (be it kalends, nones, or ides of March), shave not their lips. The hirsute growth of one half of these is not yet long enough to begin to turn down, or is down, downy, and not begun to turn to any thing else. Of this half, one half left off shaving this week, half of whom stopped day before yesterday! (Let the wise and statistical air of this statement make up for its concealed looseness and unimportance; it will not be the first trial of such an expedient.) So one sixty-fourth of the face of nature (human nature, of course, in cities) is in a mere cloudy state; or in other words, the reform is in nubibus. One thirty-second part bears hairs that look as if they had come out wrong end first, or were in a surprised state at not finding themselves nipped in the bud. One sixteenth is in stubble of all sorts and shades, and one eighth, in all, is now unchecked in its persistent efforts to produce the crop that needs no planting. As is clear to

every deep thinker and political economist. (and to whom else need we try to speak?) this leaves one half to be counted as minors, and one quarter as adult females, among whom the beard is of no account. Not that they oppose by indifference, the great movement. No, bless them! They are right now, as always. To be sure, as a class, they say "horrid," but it is with an air that rather helps than hinders its progress; an air that says, we set our faces against it," and so suggests charming pictures. They like beards, but each very much prefers to have some one to carry hers for her. The Múoraέ is a tax she likes not to have imposed on herself, though hirsute she likes to see her suitor.

The rubicund is past (as Brown said when he handed the claret to Jones), and the manly is attained. The crisis has arrived the climax of the shaving edifice has been reached; let us hope no annihilator may be nigh when it is set fire to. Its fall is begun. The "Emollient," the "Military," the "Cream" and the divers other shaving-soap factories may cease to offend olfactories-may boil their last boiling-ley their last ashes-in sackcloth, if they like. There shall be no more lather. The nose of the razor-strop man is out of joint, and he had better raise a moustache, himself, to hide it. Razor factories need no longer raise their hideous heads, for we no longer raze ours. barbers' poles shall be hereafter seen only in collections of antique curiosities. The barbarous walls of Jericho are trembling, and we have tarried there long enough. We are coming out. Every day of this blessed month has seen a delivery. It is as if thirty-one gates had been opened and from each of them Nature has received a cloud of returning children; the new roughness of their lips gratifying her, as they each kissed her fair hands in re pentant submission, with a titillation that has brought tears from her eyes and great sighs from her bosom unceasingly. Vide the weather-gauge.

The

The modest and conservative person now addressing the public held out with an obstinacy of opposition that seems incredible when looked back upon. Ever

since he first scraped an acquaintance with his chin, had he, each morning, thwarted the purposed kindness of Nature, and each night had she come again with her gentle, timid offering-it often reviled and cursed, but she never disheartened. How I thank thee, kind mother, that on no morning of those weeks, and months, and years, didst thou turn away, saying "Go to, scoffer! I come nigh thee and thy fellows no more!" Think of the loud consternation, if thou, repulsed and insulted, hadst turned away thy face from us; thyself from our faces! But no, indeed, that is not like thee! Thine erring and rebellious child laid down his arms his sharp blade and his leatherand instantly it was to him almost as if he had never taken them up. A tear trickles down and mingles with thy gift as he thinks of these things-a simple tribute to its generous and unmerited luxuriance.

Mystax, as has been hinted, is a Greek word. Thence, by most obvious gradations, have we my-tax (semper-matutinally submitted to) and meat-axe; an allusion to the sharpened, gaunt, and polished appearance of my jaws after the amercement. Some go still farther, and trace it to the moustache, and the mystery it is that we have enslaved ourselves so long; but I am not one of those who profit in distant philological analogies. "Let not the corners of your whiskers be marred, When it's so much handsomer and healthier and easier and cheaper and better every way to go bearded like the pard."

These two lines of poetry, drawn (by an imminent modern poet) with much research, the first line from the Bible and the last from Shakespeare, show the whole case in a few words and a clear light. Not to speak of the two influential authorities adduced, what can more clearly express the (growing) necessity of having some insuperable distinction between the sexes? And look at its allusion to the influence on children! How necessary to them to have some emblem of the strength of "par" as contra-distinguished from the gentle smoothness of "mar"!

How art thou fallen, oh thou razor; now raise thyself if thou canst! Little didst thou think when last I shut, with its usual and peculiar "phlemp" thy leathern case; that the rattle thou gavest was against the sides of thy coffin-that thou quittedst my esophagus for thy sarcophagus! So when some poor, crest-fallen cur, a mongrel rough and valueless, comes trotting soft behind his lord, obedient, and suspecting nought till on the bridge, the which they've passed a hundred times on other days, the keystone VOL. III.-27

reached, amazed he sees his master stop, and crouching low lay hands on him, with what intent he can but dream. With upturned eyes and piteous cries he feels the rope his neck about. Then if his master softens down, so is our simile carried out. Yes, razor; from destruction I spared thee, for the sake of the affection with which in my boyhood I regarded thee; but never shalt thou be unsepulchred, but for low and menial services; to cut another growth than that thou hast heretofore reaped, and not, like that, one that is spontaneous and thrives without cultivation. It is, however, a meek plant, that loves to be oppressed, and that is fostered by abuse. It is the corn! With this must thou be contented, for even this is only a temporary salvation from utter oblivion. When nature ceases to be maltreated even in her care of our foundations, then thou shalt indeed be laid up. But good sense descends to us, so I am afraid that about our feet thou hast a long office to perform before it gets down there. After that, shalt thou be even as an unmatched scissor, or an old bachelor-thy fang removed (across the poker) and thy cold brightness dimmed with the rust of neglect. Perhaps my great-grandchildren_may sometimes climb prattling upon my knees, touching with reverent hands my mouth's bleached curtain, and say, "show us the razor, Grandpa, and tell us all about it." Then will it be held up to fresh marvel that these things should have been. And at some of those times thou wilt be forgotten to be put back, and wilt go unheeded to that bourne, "lost," which is the ultimate destination of all manufactured things-an insatiable grave-a bottomless pit, from which nothing ever comes out, and where so few things ever are heard of.

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A CHAT ABOUT PLANTS.

LONG years ago I was in the Holy Land.

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It was the last day I was to spend near Jerusalem, and as the sun sank towards the blue waters of the Mediterranean, I found myself once more sitting on the banks of the Jordan. The air was perfectly calm; the tolling of a convent bell came faintly over the plain from Bethlehem, and mingled its well-beat cadences with the gentle, playful murmuring of the sacred stream at my feet. By my side sat an Arab, tranquilly following with his eye the light clouds of his pipe, as they gracefully rose up in the clear, blue ether, but apparently buried in deep thought. Abu Abdallah was his name; so I said, "Abu Abdallah, do you believe in God? "Thou sayest it, oh brother!" was his quiet answer. "But Abu Abdallah, I fear you do not believe that your soul is immortal;" for the old Arab. though my friend for the while, was a sad thief, and when he swiftly rode through the desert, there were voices heard, it was said, mournful voices of men, who called for the sweet life he had taken from them. He gazed at me for an instant from the depth of that unfathomable eye, the precious heirloom of a son of the Orient, but vouchsafed not a word. I was struck by his silence, and asked again. "Oh brother, oh brother, thou wrongest me!" he said, and quietly rising, he seized upon a little shapeless mass, that lay half hid in the fragrant herbs at our feet, and gently pushing it into the purling stream, he added: "Has not the God of our fathers, whose prophet is Mahomet, given us the Rose of Jericho? And does not my brother, who reads the books of the wise men of the Franks, know that the burning sands of the desert are its home, and that it delights in the fiery winds of the west, which scatter the caravan, and strew the sands of the Sahara with the bones of the traveller? There it grows, and blossoms, and our children love it. But the season comes again, and it withers and dies. And the dread simoom rises, and seizes the dry, shrivelled roots, that my brother beholds there, and on the wings of the tempest the Rose of Jericho rides far far east, until it falls upon holy soil. Now let my brother wait and he shall see!"

And we did wait, waited until the shadows grew long, and dreamy dusk covered mountain and plain. And the little shapeless mass became a miracle indeed, and right before our eyes! The roots had expanded, the leaves had un

folded, life and breath had returned to the dead child of the Sahara, and the very blossoms began to show, and to rival the faint rosy tints of the evening sun!

I never forgot that lesson of immortality -I never forgot that Rose of Jericho. On my return to Europe I learned that botanists called it "Anastatica," the flower of resurrection. I wished to know more about it, and that was the way learned something about plants.

I first

I found botany very little attractivevery little deserving of its ancient name of the "lovely science." I found that botanists would go out into the fields, their text-books in their pockets, and gather the tender children of Flora into huge masses, then dry them and classify them, describe their head-dress and uniform, their rank and dignity, and finally deposit them in magnificent herbariums. There they were, well dried and well pasted, clad, to be sure, in all the pomp and circumstance of high-sounding names-so much Latin hay. But where was their color and graceful shape? where the breath of air that made them gently wave to and fro ? where the sweet perfumes they gratefully sent up to their Maker? where the bright water at their side, in which they reflected their lovely form? where the whole glorious scene for which they were intended by Nature, and to which they lent, in return, life and beauty?

Thus it was that botanists of old collected the material only-not without bestowing unceasing industry upon it, not without making unheard of sacrifices, often of the very lives of devoted laborers in that field of science-but they were content with a form only and a name. They were like the French officer, who in one, I forget which, of the French revolutions, came to Rome and there had the good fortune to discover a precious inscription on a monument, dating far back into antiquity. Proudly, and carefully, he detached one bronze letter after another, then slipped them into a bag, and sent them to the antiquarians of Paris to be deciphered.

But there have arisen, within the last thirty years especially, men who have studied plants with the view, not only to know who they were, but rather what they were, how they lived and how they died, what their relation was to the world, and what their purpose in the great household of Nature. Kindred sciences have lent their aid; the miscroscope has laid

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