literature in Euripides. Not to notice how Eschylus makes both Heaven and Ocean sympathize most deeply with the sufferings of Prometheus, Homer in the Iliad represents even Achilles as stirred by Heaven with a deep sympathy for the woes of Priam, whose son he had slain. Still this essay on the steady evolution of the principle of social sympathy is an exceedingly valuable one, and serves as the basis for a very strong argument in the criticism on Mr. Mill contained in the preface. For the development of human sentiment and the human obligation it carries with it is not to be accounted for on what is called the solid ground of human self-interest, and cannot be ascribed to anything short of an interior guidance towards the good. The following passage seems to us of great force, especially if read after instead of before, Miss Cobbe's final essay: rather than to the lower (a sense which undoubtedly grows simultaneously with the growth of the emotions which it controls), is another problem whose solution cannot here be attempted. One remark only need be made of utilitarianism. We are told that our per to forestall a commonplace of the new phase sonal intuitions of duty are the inherited prejudices of our ancestors in favour of the kind of actions which have proved on expe rience to be most conducive to the general welfare of the community, or, as Mr. Martineau well calls them, "the capitalized experiences of utility and social coercion; the record of ancestral fears and satisfactions stored in the brain and reappearing with origin is forgotten." If this be the case, how divine pretensions only because their animal does it happen that we have all acquired in these days a very clear intuition that it is our duty to preserve the lives of the aged, of sufferers by disease, and of deformed children? The howl of indignation which followed the publication of a humanely-intended scheme of euthanasia for shortening the existence of such persons for their own benefit, may afford us a measure of what the feelings of modern Christendom would be were some new Lycur good of the commonwealth. Yet what, in truth, is this ever-growing sense of the infinite sacredness of human life but a sentiment tending directly to counteract the interest of the community at large? Again, nothing can be better than Miss Cobbe's criticism on Mr. Mill's leaning towards the worship of a probable God, and on his singular view that a future life is desired mainly from selfish motives: Finally, if the sketch I have attempted to draw of the evolution of the social sentiment appear to possess historical truth, it remains only to remark-that the long progress up-gus to propose to extinguish them for the ward of mankind which I have traced from the primeval reign of violence and antagonism to that of sympathy and mutual help, has not supplied us with the slightest clue to the mystery of how, at each successive stage and as the higher sentiment dawns, there is a corresponding overruling inward command to follow the higher and disregard the lower impulse. Nothing in the progress of the emotion explains either the existence or progress of the moral sense of obligation; any more than the anatomy of a horse explains how he is found with bit and bridle. Other things Now to those amongst us who do not believe grow, nay, everything in our nature grows, that great benefits are ever derived from credas well as these emotions; every taste al-iting delusions, and who do not feel in themters, every sentiment develops. But nothing selves the inclination to cultivate and water a within us corresponding to the moral sense hope which they know to be a flower stuck develops simultaneously along side of them, rootless by a child in the ground, this kind of setting the seal of approval on the tastes and exhortation is as strange as that which follows feelings of adult life, and of disapprobation it on the "infinitely precious familiarity of the on those of childhood. If then, this regula-imagination with the conception of a morally tive principle or intuition of a duty to follow perfect being;" the same idealization of our the higher emotion and renounce the lower standard of excellence in a person “being stand out no less inexplicable when we have traced the long history of one of the chief | emotions to be regulated, we have surely obtained at least a negative reply to the desolating doctrine recently introduced, that the moral sense in man is only the social instinct of the brute modified under the conditions of human existence? These cultivated instincts, rising into humane emotions, are not the moral sense itself, but only that which the moral sense works upon, -not that which, in any way, explains the ethical choice of good and rejection of evil, but merely the good and evil things regarding which the choice is exercised. Whence we derive the solema sense of duty to give place to the higher emotion quite possible, even when that person is con- i INDIGO. From Golden Hours. lieve," like children, that we possess them pear to feel a sort of amused surprise at when they are ours no more. "Si Dieu n'ex- those who believe that in it is revealed istait pas, il faudrait l'inventer,” is an epigram far more clearly than in ordinary human which has now been paralleled: "If we are not immortal, we had better think ourselves nature itself, the divine character and so." Yet there seems some contradiction in purposes of God. Mr. Mill's view of the advantages of the hope altogether. In the preceding essay on the utility of religion, he makes very light of it. He says: "When mankind cease to need a future life as a consolation for the sufferings of the present, it will have lost its chief value to them for themselves. I am now speaking of the unselfish. Those who are so wrapped up in self that they are unable to identify their feelings with anything which will survive them, require the notion of another selfish life beyond the grave to keep up any interest in existence." Here, again, surely we meet the singular train of misapprehensions which seem to crowd upon the writer from his incapacity to understand the religious sentiments of other men. It is precisely the selfish man who has had a comfortable life here below, who may inscribe on his tombstone that he, From Nature's temperate feast rose satisfied, Thanked Heaven that he had lived and that he died; The EARLY in June the plant commences to look ready for cutting, and a luxuriant field of indigo with its fresh dark green is a pleasant sight; the plant grows sometimes as high as six feet, but this is not desirable, as it is then less leafy, and it is the leaf which affords the dye. best plant is from four to five feet high; it is herbaceous, has a slight straight stem, and rather small oval-shaped leaves of a dark green. The flower is very insignificant; it is of a pale pink colour, but except in the districts where seed is grown it is seldom seen. When fit for and made no further demand for further ex- cutting the leaf has a slightly crisp feel istence for himself or anybody else. But the to the touch, and a peculiar rather ununselfish man who has looked abroad with pleasant smell. In the middle of Junc aching heart upon a sinful and suffering world, the rains commence and the rivers begin cannot thus be content to rise with a sancti- to rise. This is the most exciting and monious grace from the feast of life (so richly busy time of the year for the planter, spread for him), and to leave Lazarus starving when all hands are set to work to get in at his doors. That his own life on earth the crop, for if the river rise suddenly should have been so happy, so replete with hundreds of acres of plants may be lost the joys of the senses, the intellect, and the in a few hours. The factories now preaffections, from sinking into the slough of vice, and permitted to taste some of the unutterable joys of a loving and religious life,- all this makes it only the more inexplicable and the more agonizing to him to behold his brothers and sisters no worse, he is well assured, and often far better, than himself - dragging out lives of misery and privation of all higher joy, and dying perhaps at last, so far as their own consciousness goes, in final alienation and revolt from God and goodness. It is for these that he demands another and a better life at the hands of the divine justice and love; and in as far as he loves both God and man, so far is he incapable of renouncing that demand, and resting satisfied because he has had a pleasant moral existence, and because younger men will enjoy the like after him, and, when he is gone, help to " carry on the progressive movement of human affairs." The prayer of his soul, "Thy kingdom come," includes indefinitely more than this. that he should have been kept Those who read Miss Cobbe's book carefully will find not a little else in it as good and as powerfully stated as this. All we regret is, that with her profound sympathy with the philosophy and the sentiment of Christianity, she should ap sent a busy scene; carts and boats arriving laden with plant, which is cut close to the ground with reaping-hooks and tied into bundles; these bundles on arriving at the factory are measured by a chain, being paid for to the ryots at a fixed rate of so many bundles for a rupee, each man getting a paper stating the number of bundles he has given in each day. A sufficient quantity of plant having arrived, the filling of the vats commences, the bundles of plant are put into the upper row of vats till they are filled, bamboos are laid across, and two heavy beams of wood are tightly screwed down over them. The filling of the vats being completed, water is pumped into them from a reservoir close at hand, these pumps being worked by coolies' feet treading them something after the fashion of a tread-milll. The plant is left steeping, according to the weather, from eight to ten hours, it being the duty of the rung mistree (the man who looks after the details of the manufacturing) to say when the plugs closing the openings leadings from the higher to the lower vats are to be re-opened and the water al- | days. On the proper steeping, beating, lowed to flow into the lower vats. This and boiling of the indigo in a great measdone, the beaters get in, eight men to ure depends the quality of the produce, each vat, and commence beating the water with long poles shaped like paddles. The beating of the vats generally takes about two hours, but the length of time required for this as for the steeping depends much upon the temperature, &c., and is decided by the rung mistree, who judges by the colour and appearance of the water. The beaters present a most extraordinary appearance as they step out of the vats, dyed from head to foot a dark blue, which gives their bronze skins a curious tinge by which vat-coolies may be known for weeks after the manufacturing. The beating of the vats over, the indigo subsides; the waste water is carried off by means of a drain, and the indigo flows by another drain to the reservoir, whence it is pumped into the boiler, boiled, run off on to a table, pressed, and carried to the drying-house as before described; from the time the plant is cut till the indigo reaches the drying-house occupying from two to three though the soil on which it is grown, and the water in which it is steeped, also materially affect it. The manufacturing season generally lasts about six weeks, and the indigo is fit for packing about the beginning of November. Before packing commences, sample cakes of each day's manufacture are examined, and the indigo arranged according to colour, so that each chest may be of as uniform a quality as possible. Women are now employed to clean the cakes, using brushes to free them from the mildew which collects on them. This done, the indigo is packed as closely as possible in large chests, the packing being superintended by the manager and the assistants at their several factories. The chests are now weighed and marked with the factory mark and sent down to Calcutta, where it is sold by auction at the different indigo-marts and shipped to all parts of the world where textile manufacture is carried on. The outlines of my grief will softly fade, THE GENERAL CHORUS. What is this multitudinous chorus, What is this burden of human breath? On with the rest, your footsteps timing! Mystical music flows in the song, Tenderly soothing, it bears you along. Strange is the chant of human breath! Fraser's Magazine. II. MISS ANGEL. By Miss Thackeray. Part II., Cornhill Magazine, III. THOUGHTS ABOUT THINKING, IV. THE STORY OF VALENTINE; V. EARLY KINGS OF NORWAY. SISTE VIATOR, A REBUKE, MISCELLANY, AND HIS Cornhill Magazine, Edinburgh Review, 643 By Thomas POETRY. 642 LENT, Blackwood's Magazine, Fraser's Magazine, 704 PUBLISHED EVERY SATURDAY BY LITTELL & GAY, & GAY, BOSTON. TERMS OF SUBSCRIPTION. For EIGHT DOLLARS, remitted directly to the Publishers, the LIVING AGE will be punctually forwarded for a year, free of postage. An extra copy of THE LIVING AGE is sent gratis to any one getting up a club of Five New Subscribers. Remittances should be made by bank draft or check, or by post-office money-order, if possible. If neither of these can be procured, the money should be sent in a registered letter. All postmasters are obliged to register letters when requested to do so. Drafts, checks and money-orders should be made payable to the order of LITTELL & GAY. Nor lingering in a meted-out delay; None closed the eyes, nor felt the latest We shall droop our wings, pipes the throstle Of all the silver stars; the flowers asleep Dream no more of it, nor their morning eyes Betray the secrets it has bidden them keep. Then why are you so sad? warble all the little birds, While the sky is blue, Brooding over phantoms and vexing about words That never can be true, Everything is merry, trill the happy, happy birds, |