although he saw instinctively the relations of men to government. Nor did his sympathetic nature possess the power always to curb the passions of men or to hurl the bolts by which wickedness is driven back. Not on these accounts is he great. Call him less a force than an influence, less 66 king of men" than servant of Humanity, his name is destined to be a spell beyond that of any king, while it shines aloft like a star. Great is he as one of earth's benefactors, possessing in largest measure that best gift from God to man, the genius of beneficence sustained to the last by perfect honesty; great too he is as an early, constant Republican, who saw the beauty and practicability of Republican Institutions as the expression of a true civilization, and upheld them always; and great he is as example, which, so long as history endures, must inspire author, orator, soldier, and statesman, all alike to labor and, if need be, to suffer for Human Rights. The fame of such a character, brightening with the Progress of Humanity, can be measured only by the limits of a world's gratitude and the bounds of time. ROBERT T. CONRAD. ROBERT T. CONRAD, the author of the highly successful tragedy of Aylmere, was born in Philadelphia about the year 1810. After completing his preliminary education, he studied law with his uncle, Mr. Thomas Kittera; but in place of the practice of the profession, devoted himself to an editorial career, by the publication of the Daily Commercial Intelligencer, a periodical he subsequently merged in the Philadelphia Gazette. In consequence of ill health he was forced to abandon the toil of daily editorship. He returned to the practice of the law, and was immediately Mr. Conrad occupied a prominent place in, and in 1854 was Mayor of Philadelphia, having been elected to that office by the Native American party, He died in that city, June 27, 1858. Mr. Conrad wrote his first tragedy before his twenty-first year. It was entitled Conradin, and performed with success. Aylmere was written some years after. It became the property of Mr. Edwin Forrest, and proved one of his most successful plays. The hero, Jack Cade, assumes the name of Aylmere during his concealment in Italy, to escape the consequences of a daring act of resistance to tyranny in his youth. He returns to England, and heads the insurrection which bears his name in history. The democratic hero is presented with energy, and the entire production abounds in spirited scenes and animated language. The tragedy was published by the author in 1852 in a volume entitled Aylmere, or the Bondman of Kent; and Other Poems. The leading article of the latter portion of the collection, The Sons of the Wilderness-Reflections beside an Indian Mound, extending to three hundred and seventy lines, is a meditative poem on the Indians, reciting their wrongs and sympathizing with their fate in a mournful strain. The remaining pieces are for the most part of a reflective character. Heaven's free-born, frolic in the harvest sky? The wind which blowetli wliere it listeth, why Hath it a charm? Why love we thus the sea, Lordless and limitless? Or the cataract cry, With which Niagara tells eternity That she is chainless now, and will for ever be! Or why, in breathing nature, is the slave Or beast or bird, a thing of scorn? Where wave The prairie's purple seas, the free horse flies, The ne'er-tamed eagle soars and fans the skies. If Freedom thus o'er earth, sea, air, hath cast And those who for God's truth or fought or fell, on. Ponder it, freemen! It will teach that Time Shrink from the future? 'Neath the last sun's glow, Above expiring Time, her starry flag shall flow! Rome from the crushed world's empire, caught the light That led them from soft eyes, and never knew Shame, fear, nor fetter. The stern Spartan drew, From matrons weeping o'er each recreant son, His spirit; and our Indian thus will woo The stake-his forest Portia by-smile on, Till the death-rattle ring and the death-song is done. Fame is man's vassal; and the Maid of France, The shepherd heroine, and Padilla's dame, Whose life and love and suffering mock romance, Are half forgotten. Corday-doth her name Thrill you? Why, Brutus won eternal fame: Was his, a Roman man's, a bolder blow Than that weak woman's? same Marat a worse than Cæsar. In seas for Right, and ne'er a For the cause the Blood Blood may flow holier offering know! The desert rock may yield a liberty- Makes the wide. desert of the ocean bright, Is Freedom's foster nurse; and though she fling Her wealth on many a shore, on none where fetters ring! And wealth diffused is Freedom's child and aid. Has been, a despot; for, with unspread glow, However bright it burn, nor feel, nor know. 'Tis power; and power unshared is curst, and works but woe! Labor on Freedom waits (what hope to cheer Of truth-enamoured mind, that mocks the sway * Twin-born with Time was Freedom, when the soul, Where all the crushed are raised, the just are free Her light the living God-her mate eternity! **In 1862 his Devotional Poems were published, edited by a poet-friend, Mr. George H. Boker. **SANCTIFY THY NAME. Holy and reverend is his name.-Ps, cxi. 9 HALLOWED BE THY NAME! In every clime, 'Neath every sky! Or in this smiling land, Where Vice, bold-browed, and Craft, walk hand in hand, And varnished Seeming gives a grace to Crime; Or in the howling wild, or on the plain, Where Pagans tremble at their rough-hewn god; Wherever voice hath spoke, or foot hath trod; Sacred Thy name! The skeptic, wild and vain, Roused from his rosy joys, the Osmanlite; The laughing Ethiop, and the dusk Hindoo; Thy sons of every creed, of every hue; Praise thee! Nor earth alone. Each star of night, Join in the choir! till Heaven and earth acclaim, Still, and forever, Hallowéd be Thy name! He that walketh righteously; him. ISA. xxxiii. 15, 16. GIVE US THIS DAY OUR DAILY BREAD! Thou art Lord of the harvest. Thou hast taught the song Sung by the rill, the grassy vale along; And 't is Thy smile, when Summer's zephyrs start, That makes the wavy wheat a sea of gold! Give me to share thy boon! No miser hoard I crave; no splendour, no Apician board: Freedom, and faith, and food, and all is told: I ask no more. But spare my brethren! They Now beg, in vain, to toil; and cannot save Their wan-eyed loved ones, sinking to the grave. Give them their daily bread! How many pray, Alas, in vain, for food! Be Famine fed; And give us, Lord, this day our daily bread. **WORK WHILE IT IS DAY. I must work the works of him that sent me, while it is day; the night cometh, when no man can work. -JOHN ix. 4. Work while 'tis day; for the dreary night cometh, When the laggard lies down, but it is not to sleep; Scorn'd Time is avenged in the worm that ne'er dieth; Whatsoe'er a man soweth he also shall reap. Work out your salvation with fear and with trembling, And dull not the duty with doubt or delay; For God and your brother earth's harvest-field calls you, Then faint not, nor falter; but work while 'tis day. Work while 'tis day; for God gave not your being, A mockery of life and a burthen to men; To grow and to grovel, to be and to perish, Like weeds on the waste, or like fogs o'er the fen. Ye were form'd for a purpose, 'tis active and earnest, To live and to labour, while labour you may; In the forum or furrow, at helm or at hammer, Whatever the duty, still work while 't is day! Work! for the true Christian shrinks from no duty; His spirit of love and of power is brave; Not hearing, but doing; not talking, but toiling; Not sleeping, there's slumber enough in the Work while 't is day. It is not in seclusion, As husband or father, as friend or as brother, By soul and by sinew: then work while 'tis day. Work while 'tis day. True Devotion ne'er wearies; The Faith that is sluggard is cold as the clod; But blest is the servant, whose Lord finds him faithful; Peace, Honour, and Glory, the gifts of his God! Then cheerly to toil! till life's task-work is over, And the voice of our King calls His chosen away; Oh, sweet is their sleep on the bosom of Jesus, The sleep of the just, who have worked while 'twas day. THE LINGERING WINTER. He that goeth forth and weepeth, bearing precious seed, shall doubtless come again with rejoicing, bringing his sheaves with him. Ps. cxxvi. 6. The snow-flakes kiss the ploughman's crimson'd face; He guides the share and turns the furrow still, With manly patience and with measured pace, Nor heeds the winter lingering on the hill. The foamy flood roars sullen through the vale; The crow-flocks flap the blast with labouring wings; The bare oak shivers in the northern gale: But on the topmost bough the blue-bird sings. It sings of spring, the ploughman hears the song, Of bridal April and of blooming May: And as he treads with sturdy step along, Hope in his bosom sings the selfsame lay, He hears the summer rustling in his corn; Cloud chases cloud across his bending grain: The mower's scythe-song greets the golden morn, The soft eve welcomes home the loaded wain. And Autumn's wealth, its pleasures and its pride, His heart with joy, his ear with music. fill; His plough he follows with a quicker stride, Nor heeds the winter lingering on the hill. Thus to the Christian, wheresoe'er he roam, Planting the Orient, Afric, or the Isles, Or the frost-fettered fields, alas! of home, A promised harvest mid the winter smiles. Spring coy and hard, the labourers faint and few; The hard, chill glebe unyielding to the share; The shrill blast shrieks the leafless forest through: But from on High a voice dispels despair. Before him the redeemed Christ's harveststand; And hosts with hymns of praise his bosom thrill; His plough he seizes with a strengthen'd hand, Nor heeds the winter lingering on the hill. FREDERICK WILLIAM THOMAS. F. W. THOMAS was born in Providence, R. I., October 25, 1808. In 1830 he removed to Cincinnati, and on his descent of the Ohio composed a poem of some six or eight stanzas, which appeared in the Commercial Daily Advertiser on his arrival at his destination. This he subsequently enlarged and recited in public, and in 1833 published with the title-The Emigrant, or Reflections when descending the Ohio. In 1835 Mr. Thomas published the novel of Clinton Bradshaw. The hero of this story is a young lawyer, who is brought in the course of his professional pursuits in contact with criminals, while his desire to advance himself in politics introduces him to the low class of hangers-on and wire-pullers of party. The publication made a sensation by the spirit and animation with which it was written and the bold delineations of character it contained. It was followed in 1836 by East and West, a story which introduces us in its progress to the two great geographical divisions of our country, and possesses animation and interest. An account of a race between two Mississippi steamboats, terminating in the usual explosion, is deservedly celebrated as a passage of vigorous_description. In 1840 Mr. Thomas published Howard Pinckney, a novel of contemporary American life. He is also the author of The Beechen Tree, a Tale told in Rhyme, published by the Harpers, and of several fugitive poems of merit. The song which we quote has attained a wide popularity. Ile died in Washington, September 30, 1866. 'TIS SAID THAT ABSENCE CONQUERS LOVE. I plunge into the busy crowd, HORACE GREELEY. HORACE GREELEY, a prominent journalist, was born at Amherst, New Hampshire, February 3, 1811. He received a limited common school education, the deficiencies of which he, however, in some measure supplied by unwearied activity from his earliest years in the pursuit of knowledge. At the age of fourteen, his parents having Herace Ereeley in The Life of Horace Greeley, a volume well balanced in its proportions, and attractive in style. **As the editor of the Tribune, and thereby the tacitly recognized head of journalism in America, the name of Horace Greeley will be most fitly commemorated in history; yet the literary works of his later years are sufficient in themselves to give him an acknowledged rank among its authors. In matter, method, and style in weight of thought, practical aims, appeals direct even to bluntness, and clear, exact, crisp language -- his writings have many characteristics in common with those of the elder printer, Franklin; but at no sacrifice of spirit or originality, because the very outbreathings of an intense individuality. In 1859 appeared: An Overland Journey from New York to San Francisco, in the Summer of 1859, a series of observant letters reprinted from the Tribune. Nearly ten years later, its author modestly wrote of this: "As a photograph of scenes that were then passing away, of a region on the point of rapid and striking transformation, I judge that this may be deemed worth looking into by a dozen persons per annum for the next twenty years. It had been preceded, in 1856, by A History of the Struggle for Slavery Extension in the United States, from the Declaration of Independence to the Present Day, of which ten thousand copies were sold; and it was followed by the most elaborate of his books. in the meantime removed to Vermont, he obtained employment as an apprentice in the office of the Northern Spectator, Pultney, Vermont. In 1830, the paper was discontinued and he returned home; but soon after made a second engagement to work as an apprentice in Erie, Pa., for fifty dollars a year, out of which he saved enough in a few months to expend twenty-five or thirty dollars for his father, then a farmer on the line between Chautauque county, New York, and Pennsylvania, and pay his travelling expenses to New York, where he arrived in August, 1831, "with a suit of blue cotton jean, two brown shirts, and five dollars in cash." He obtained work as a journeyman printer, and continued thus employed for eighteen months. 1834, he commenced with Jonas Winchester, afterwards the publisher of the New World, a weekly paper of sixteen pages quarto, called the New Yorker. It was conducted with much ability as a political and literary journal, but was not suc- In the years 1864 and 1867 were published cessful. Its conductors gave it a long and fair trial the two subscription volumes of The American of several years, and were finally compelled to Conflict; A History of the Great Rebellion in abandon the enterprise. While editing this jour- the United States of America, 1860-4: Its Causes, nal Mr. Greeley also conducted, in 1838, the Jef- Incidents, and Results; Intended to Exhibit esfersonian, published by the Whig Central Com-pecially its Moral and Political Phases, with the mittee of the State, and the Log Cabin, a paign" paper, published for six months preceding the presidential election of 1840. In cam Mr. Greeley's next enterprise was the publication of the New York Tribune, the first number of which appeared on Saturday, April 10, 1841. It soon took the stand which it has since maintained of a thoroughly appointed, independent, and spirited journal. In the July after its commencement, its editor formed a partnership with Mr. Thomas McElrath, who continued its publisher till succeeded by Mr. Samuel Sinclair. In 1848 Mr. Greeley was elected a member of the House of Representatives. In 1851 he visited Europe, and was chosen chairman of one of the juries of the World's Fair at London. His letters written during his journey to the Tribune, were collected on his return in a volume, with the title Glances at Europe. In 1853 he edited a volume of papers from the Tribune, Art and Industry as Represented in the Exhibition at the Crystal Palace, New York. A number of addresses delivered by him on various occasions have been also collected in a volume, with the title of Hints towards Reforms. Mr. Greeley has been fortunate in securing, during an early stage of his career, a biographer who combines in an unusual degree the essential characteristics of enthusiasm, research, and good sense. Mr. J. Parton has presented to the public Drift and Progress of American Opinion respecting Human Slavery, from 1776 to the Close of the War for the Union. The first volume treated chiefly of the civil events which culminated in the Rebellion; and the second detailed, with little attempt at rhetorical embellishment, the military and political victories which ended in the restoration of national peace. This work was composed, by the aid of an amanuensis, in the early morning hours, before the beginning of the editorial tasks of each day. Its painstaking accuracy, its fairness and breadth of view, make it a standard authority. A chief design was the proof that the late struggle was "the unavoidable result of antagonisms imbedded in the very nature of our heterogeneous institutions; that ours was indeed an irrepressible conflict,' which might have been precipitated or postponed, but could by no means have been prevented." And after a later survey of the war-literature, its author felt justified in the candid claim: "It is one of the clearest statements yet made of the long chain of causes which led irresistibly to the war for the Union, showing why that war was the righteous and natural consequence of the American people's *Recollections of a Busy Life, p. 420. A Representative Life of Horace Greeley, with an Introduction by Cassius M. Clay. By L. U. Reavis, 1872. The American Conflict, Preface. general and guilty compliance in the crime of upholding and diffusing Human Slavery. I proffer it as my contribution towards a fuller and more vivid realization of the truth that God governs this world by moral laws as active, immutable, and all-pervading as can be operative in any other, and that every collusion or compromise with evil must surely invoke a prompt and signal retribution."* This work won such popular favor that it soon reached a sale of a hundred thousand copies. But when Horace Greeley signed his name on the bail-bond of Jefferson Davis, at the earnest solicitation of the latter's family and counsel, in May, 1867, its sale and the circulation of his journal were checked for several years. His act was an unselfish one; its propriety, however, many have questioned. At the repeated request of Mr. Bonner, Horace Greeley contributed to the New York Ledger, in 1867-8, a series of autobiographic reminiscences. These, with other papers, were speedily gathered into a volume, entitled: Recollections of a Busy Life: Including Reminiscences of American Politics and Politicians, from the Opening of the Missouri Conflict to the Downfall of Slavery; to which are added" Miscellanies "Literature as a Vocation;" "Poets and Poetry Reforms and Reformers; "A Defence of Protection," etc. Also, A Discussion with Robert Dale Owen of the Law of Divorce. The dedication was "to our American Boys, who, born in poverty, cradled in obscurity, and early called from school to rugged labor, are seeking to convert obstacle into opportunity, and wrest achievement from difficulty." This frank-spirited addition to our few inimitable memoirs, detailing the struggles year by year of a printer-lad till he became the censor of public opinion, cannot but prove his most popular book with posterity. In 1870 appeared Essays Designed to Elucidate the Science of Political Economy, while Serving to Explain and Defend the Policy of Protection to Home Industry, as a System of National Co-operation for the Elevation of Labor a series of articles reprinted from the Tribune, and dedicated to the memory of Henry Clay. This thoughtful advocacy of a cherished conviction met with but a fifth of the sale accorded to his early work on "Slavery Extension." It was followed by a contribution of six pages to The Great Industries of the United States (1871); viz., "A Historical Summary of the Origin, Growth, and Perfection of the Chief Industrial Arts of this Country forming a concise and popular exposition of the arguments for Protection. In the year following was issued: What I Know of Farming: A Series of Brief and Plain Expositions of Practical Agriculture, as an Art based upon Science. The aim of Mr. Greeley was not to treat in detail the matters of practical farm-life, in which he acknowledged many of his readers might be more familiar than himself, but to develop the underlying principles as suggested by extensive travel and close observation, as well as by actual experiment. His * Recollections of a Busy Life, p. 424. motive was "the elevation of labor from the plane of drudgery and servility to one of selfrespect, self-guidance, and genuine independence."* To this list of standard works in as many distinct departments of literature, remains only to be added The Tribune Almanac, a political and statistical annual which for a term of thirtyfour years circulated from fifty to a hundred thousand copies annually. The closing days of the life of this benefactor of his race tell a sad tale, and one so recent as to be fresh in the minds of all. Separating on questions of public policy from the leaders of the party he had devotedly served, and accepting a nomination to the Presidency from its old and new adversaries, he threw himself into the campaign of 1872 with all the ardent zeal of his nature, and delivered a series of popular speeches invaluable for their statesman - like views. But heavy political reverses surprised him in October; on the 30th of that month his invalid wife died, at whose bedside he had watched, day and night, for weeks through without rest; and, last of all, the election returns of November came to overwhelm the mind and shattered health of this nervously prostrated man, who had latterly almost forgotten how to eat and sleep. He died at the house of Dr. Choate, several miles from his own country home at Chappaqua, on Friday afternoon, November 29, aged sixty-one years. His last words were: "I know that my Redeemer liveth!" and "It is done!" The pulpit and the press of the country were unanimous in their eulogies of his well-spent life, and his untiring zeal for good. His remains lay in state at the New York City Hall, where thousands of citizens filed by to pay their respects. The President and other chief dignitaries of the nation and state thronged the church of Rev. Dr. Chapin, to do homage to his funeral obsequies; and his body was laid in his family-vault at Greenwood Cemetery, Brooklyn. Among the countless tributes to the memory of the late Horace Greeley, very noticeable of which are the affectionate and appreciative memorial articles by his co-workers,†t a brief extract from the sermon of Rev. James Freeman Clarke of Boston, on December 1, merits attention by its comprehensive and faithful portraiture of his life and character: "A man has died this last week, who has been conspicuous during forty years since he entered New York in 1831, with all his goods tied up in his handkerchief. Till within a month he has been more abused and ridiculed than any other man in the country. He dies, and now, those who were so loud in his censure can hardly say enough in his praise. Now he is the great editor,' an upright, generous, pure, and usually sagacious man; almost always right, and with an energy of character and force of will, which, as was said of Howard, the nature of the human mind forbade to be more, and the character of the What I Know of Farming, Preface. † Now York Weekly Tribune, December 4, 1872, six pages, Also, "The Man Horace Greeleya tribute from Bayard Taylor," February 12, 1873; and The Memorial Volume, 1873. |