THE MAN OF : LETTERS AS REFORMER.* COLONEL HIGOINSON, whose works have

just been sent to us in one of the charming " Riverside Editiona," is one 'of the most venerable representatives of a type which is Practically. indigenous to the United Statesi,—the man of letters who-also plays a serious part in public affairs. In 'this eofintry 'the two things are usually kept _distinct. Such attempts aathosa of Thackeray and Scott to enter the world of politics were not happy, and when we think of a literary man who has Much affected the progress of human affairs, it has been rather, as in the case of 'Dickens, through his books than by. direct personal effort. -Of *course, we must not be sup, posed to forget such a ease as that of Lord Beaconsfield but he was rather a politician who amused himself by... writing novels than a novelist who rose to Power in the State., Mr. "John Morley is the_ most eminent example whom we can • Cheerful Yesterdays; Contemporaries; Army Life in a Black Regiment; Womin and the Alphabet; Studies in Romance; Outdoor Studies and. Poems; Studies in History and Letters. "Works of Thomas Wentworth ginson. Igyvelde Editictn." 13ost.9, ; Houghton, hiiffiin., and Co. [Si168.1.

call to mind of a man of letters who has risen to political . power in this country, and even the warmest admirers of his literary work—amongst .whom we are glad to profess our-

. -selves—will hardly contend that he is likely to leave a mark . at all commensurate with his ability on the public history of

his time. In the United States, however, as in France, the -literary man takes a far closer share in public affairs than it is easy to parallel in this country, where men are some- what inclined to distrust the man of letters as a " mere student" or an "academic politician." Colonel Higginson's life, which is told so charmingly and with such spontaneous

and entire naturalness in the autobiography which he calls Cheerful Yesterdays, affords an admirable specimen

of this type. His natural path in life was that of the writer and the student. He was educated at Harvard for the ministry, and indeed held that sacred office for eleven years. Had his lot fallen in untroubled times, we should now think of him as an aged and honoured clergyman who had beguiled his leisure by writing many delightful essays on literary and ethical subjects, and had trifled in his youth with the Muses of Poetry and Romance. Four or five of the volumes now before us testify to this side of Colonel Higginson's character,—as the prefix to his name shows that other and very different destinies were awaiting him in the clouded times which were ahead of his young and puissant

nation when he left the Divinity School at. Harvard in 1847.

In one of the most notable passages that we have read for a long while in a modern book, Colonel Higginson shows us the secret at once of the strenuous achievements of his life, and of the honour in which his name is held by Americans who know not only his writings but his deeds. We are sure that the present writer will be forgiven for confessing that, when he did not know so much of American history as he does now, he once said to an old American friend that he did not quite understand why Colonel Higginson was classed by his countrymen with writers like Lowell and Thoreau. " My dear fellow," was the answer, "we know what Higginson did and what he suffered : you only think of what he wrote !" There is much in the double point of view, though the reader who can enter into the spirit of these manly and cheerful volumes will be prepared to allow that, even on literary grounds, the rank thus granted to Colonel Higginson is scarcely too high. To return to our quotation, it is in these words that Colonel Higginson sets forth the ripe fruit of his

experience, as one who has known a wider range of life than falls to the lot of most men,—certainly of most men of letters:— "moral of my whole tale is that while no man who is appointed by nature to literary service should forsake it for public life, yet the experience of the platform, and even of direct political service, will be most valuable to him, up to a certain point. That neither of these avenues leads surely to fame or wealth is a wholly secondary matter. Gibbon says of himself that ' in circumstances more indigent or more wealthy' be should never have accomplished the task or acquired the fame of an historian.' For myself, I have always been very grateful, first, fps not being rich, since wealth is a condition giving not merely new temptations, but new cares and responsibilities, such as a student should not be called upon to undertake; and secondly, for always having had the health and habits which enabled me to earn an honest living by literature, and this without actual drudgery. Drudgery in literature is not simply to work hard, which is a pleasure, but to work on unattractive material. If one escapes drudgery, it seems to me that he has in literature the most delightful of all pursuits, but especially if he can get the added.variety that comes from having the immediate contact with life which occasional public speaking gives. The writer obtains from such intercourse that which Selden, in his Table Talk,' attributes to the habit of dining in public, as practised by old English Sovereigns : • The King himself used to eat in the hall, and his lords with him, and then be understood men.' It is, after all, the orator, not the writer, who meets men literally face to face ; beyond this their functions are much alike. Of course, neither of them can expect to win the vast prizes of wealth or power which commerce sometimes gives ; and one's beat preparation is to have looked poverty and obscurity in the face in youth, to have taken its measure and accepted it as a possible alternative, —a thing insignificant to a man who has, or even thinks he has, a higher aim. No single sentence, except a few of Emerson's, ever moved me so much in youth as did a passage translated in Mrs. Austen's German Prose Writers' from Heinzelmann, an author of whom I never read another word : 'Be and continue poor, young man, while others around you grow rich by fraud and disloyalty ; be without place or power, while others beg their way upward; bear the pain of disappointed hopes, while others gain the accomplishment of theirs by flattery; forego the gracious pressure of the hand, for which others cringe and crawl; wrap yourself in your own virtue, and seek a friend and your daily bread. If you have, in such a course, grown gray with unbleached honour, bless God, and die.' This should be learned ly heart by every young man ; but he should also:temper it with the fine saying of Thoreau that he • did not wish to practise } elf- denial unless it was quite necessary.' In other words, a man should not be an ascetic for the sake of asceticism, but he should cheerfully accept that attitude if it proves to be for him tl- e necessary path to true manhood. It is not worth while that he should live, like Spinoza, on five cents a day. It ik worth while that be should be ready to do this, if needful, rather than to forego his appointed work, as Spinoza certainly did not. If I am glad of anything, it is that I learned in time, though not without some early atumblings, to adjust life to its actual conditions, and to find it richly worth living."

This passage is the keynote of a most wise and manly hook, as of the life which it narrates. We leave the reader who does not already know the story to read for himself how

Colonel Higginson was led to throw himself soul and body into the Abolition movement, which finally triumphed when Lincoln was moved to issue the famous proclamation which added the ethical virtue of a crusade against slavery to the patriotic virtue of a fight for national unity. Two things we

should like to note in passing. One is that Boston, in the earlier half of the nineteenth century, was a singular nest of

ethical philosophers who have seldom been matched in their union of theory with practice. The modem reader is a little apt to forget this when he sneers at " the hub of the universe," and Colonel Higginson's record comes oppor- tunely to remind us of the atmosphere in which not only Emerson and Lowell, but Garrison and Wendell Phillips were bred. The episode of Bronson Alcott at the attack on Boston Court-House is a case in point,—" neither Plato nor Pythagoras could have done the thing better." The second notable point is the remarkable state of mind which was produced among the Abolitionists by the horrors of the slave system. Piracy and murder—as the Southerners might call them—were among the ordinary incidents of the day's work to these truly peaceful, Christian, and ethically minded folk when it was a question of rescuing a fugitive slave, Even the non-resistance Quaker admitted that he would advise a slave in peril of recapture to shoot his pursuer dead, and Colonel Higginson describes the yacht which was kept in commission by some of his colleagues for the purpose of kid- napping any slave-owner who threatened to reclaim a fugitive slave by law, and taking him a trip along the coast of Maine till he agreed to abandon his case ! It is almost impossible for us to understand such a mental state, though we are thoroughly convinced that it was not only justified by the condition of things, but necessary to reform them, Colonel Higginson's account of his own sensations when he was detailed from his preaching to take part in the struggle for the maintenance of Kansas as a Free State appeals more strongly to us after the experiences of the two past years.

He speaks thus of his first ride through the debatable ground :—

" It had been swept by the hostile parties of both factions ; there was no more law than in the Scottish Highlands ; every swell of the rolling prairie offered a possible surprise, and I had some of the stirring sensations of a moss-trooper. Never before in my life had I been, distinctly and unequivocally, outside of the world of human law ; it had been ready to protect me even when I disobeyed it. Here it bad ceased to exist; my Sharp's rifle, my revolvers—or, these failing, my own ingenuity and ready wit—were all the protection I had. It was a delightful sensation. I could quote to myself from Browning's magnificent soliloquy in Oolombe's Birthday '—

When is man strong until be feels alone P'"

Colonel Higginson's Army Lfe in a Black Regiment, which describes the final fruition of all these strenuoust

anxious, and toiling years, when at last it was his privilege to be the first to lead the despised negro in anms against his oppressors, and to demonstrate his remarkable qualities of faithfulness, courage, and even of moderation in the hour of victory, is peculiarly interesting to us at present. But it is hard to think that a time will ever come when the two volumes which we have named, with their modest and manly record of a long life spent in earnest labour for the good of humanity, will cease to be prized by the sympathetic reader, even if Colonel Higginson's pleasant, but necessarily far less moving, literary essays are fated, like all works of a critical

nature, to feel the fashion of the times.