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Even in America, we get nearer the Chaucerian and Shakespearean dialect in the country than in the city. Old people are also necessarily nearer to it than the young, whatever the language. Thus M. Pasquier, who died in France in 1615 at the age of eighty-seven, remembered that in his youth the French word honnête had still an s in it, as in the English "honest," and complained that he lived to see the s dropped and a circumflex accent substituted. It is to be noted, also, that in a new country all changes, when once introduced, make their way much faster than in an older one. We still see English critics laying the whole responsibility for the dropping of the u in "honor,"

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," "favor,” and the like, on Webster's Dictionary, when it really originated in England long before the publication of that work. It is stated in The Gentleman's Magazine for 1803 (No. lxxiii, part i, p. 146) that there was at that time in the library of St. John's College, Cambridge, a copy of Middleton's Life of Cicero printed with the omission of the u in such words, a volume in which some pious student had taken the pains to reinsert them all. It would, at that time, have been thought an equal outrage to drop the closing k from physick, musick, publick, and the like, the only difference being that the u has thus far held its own, and the k has not. The English language simply changes faster in America than in England; and in this respect, as in some others, we are more like the French in our qualities. Vaugelas, an old French translator of Quintus Curtius, after devoting thirty years to the work, had to correct the language and spelling of the earlier part to make it conform to that of the latter pages; so that the critic Voiture applied to his case the Latin epigram of Martial on a barber who did his work so slowly that the hair began to grow again upon one half the face, while he was shaving the other.

When we pass from the comparative dialects of the English and American

cousins to their respective intonations, we find that, as Mr. William Archer has admirably pointed out in the Pall Mall Magazine, there are so many whims and inconsistencies to be counted up in each family that it is hardly worth while to strike the balance. In colloquial utterance it is a curious fact that the nation which uses the more even and uninflected tone is the more impetuous and impulsive of the two, namely, the American; while the Englishman, slower and more staid, has yet a far more varied intonation. The most patriotic American, after a stay of some months in England, is struck by a certain flatness and monotony in the prevailing utterance of his fellow countrymen, on the quarter-deck of the returning steamer. Here, as in most things,.there is a middle ground, and the two families are much less distinguishable in this respect than formerly. The American nasality is also toned down, and it is more and more common for two English-speaking strangers to meet and try in vain to guess the national origin of each other. When it comes to the actual pronunciation, it is a curious fact to notice, that special variations of speech in the English lower class have ceased to be accidental and unconscious, if they ever were so, but are more deliberate and, so to speak, premeditated, than those of the corresponding class—so far as there is such a class- -in America. heard with interest, for the first time, in a third-class railway carriage in London an evidently conscientious and careful mother impressing on her child as a duty that extraordinary transformation of the letter a into i or y, of which the best manual is to be found in Mr. Whiteing's inexhaustible tale, No. 5 John Street. His neighbors on that street usually transformed “ paper" into "piper," lady" into "lidy," and "always into "alwize." In my own case, when a sudden shower came up, the little boy called attention to it, in what would seem to us a natural enough dialect, Mother,

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it's rainin'!"

"You should n't say rainin'," said the anxious mother; "you should say rynin'!" It brought home to me a similar attempt, on the part of an Irish-American orator, to correct Senator Lodge's habitual and very proper pronunciation of the place of his summer residence, Nahant. "Mr. Lodge of Nahant," said the orator, with a contemptuous prolongation of the last two vowels. He then paused for a sympathetic response from a Cambridge audience, but receiving none, he repeated, “Mr. Lodge of Nahant; that's the way he calls it. Common people call it Năhănt."

The conclusive statement as to the future relation of English and American cousins may perhaps be found in that quiet sentence in which Emerson's volume called English Traits sums up (in 1856) its whole contents: "It is noticeable that England is beginning to interest us a little less." Toward this tends the whole discussion of that in which the mother country differs from her still formidable rival, France, on the one side, and from her gigantic child, the American Republic, on the other. As against both of these, England still clings to the toy of royalty and all which it implies. Against countries where aspiring intellect finds nothing too high for it to aim at, there still remains in England the absolute precedence of the House of Lords. I knew a young American girl, who, going to England under the care of an ambassador's family, and attending her first large dinner party, selected, upon looking about her, as the most interesting guest in the room, one man of distinguished aspect, whom she resolved to watch. When the guests were ushered into the dining-hall according to the laws of precedence, she found herself at the very end of the brilliant procession, as one of two untitled plebeians, in company with the very man who had interested her, and who proved to be Samuel Rogers, the poet and patron of art, and the recognized head of liter

ary society in London. She always said that she secured two things at that entertainment, namely, the most delightful companion that she ever had at a dinner party, and, moreover, a lesson in the outcome of mere hereditary rank that would last a lifetime. Rogers's poems are not now read so much as formerly, but at that time the highest attention a literary American visitor could receive in London was to dine with him. He was also one of the richest bankers in that city, and was very possibly the only person in the room who had won for himself a reputation outside of his own little island; but he was next to nobody in that company, and the little American girl was the nobody.

Max O'Rell points out that the Frenchman who takes no notice of a duke will turn to take a second look at a great literary man or savant. No doubt the English aristocracy, as is always the case with aristocracies, often goes out of its way to do honor to literature and art in the form of courtesy or patronage; but this, too, has its limits. It is easy enough for a literary man in England to dine with a lord who shares his own tastes; it is only when he is asked to dine with a stupid lord that the attention can be counted as a social recognition. Even in this case it may be in the hope of finding the barbaric guest amusing; and it was said that the immediate cause of the artist Haydon's suicide was his despair at being hopelessly eclipsed in polite society by Tom Thumb. If this is true, what fatal instances of self-destruction may not have taken place among American artists and authors who found themselves equally outshone in the English fashionable life by Buffalo Bill!

But let us turn from these trifles and go deeper. No American could possibly have passed through England during the anxious days of President McKinley's final ordeal and death, without being profoundly impressed with the inalienable tie between the two nations

whose cousinship never before was so strikingly visible. I happened to be at Exeter, a city as marked, perhaps, as any in England for all that is non-American in church and state. All through that fatal Sunday the telegrams conveying the latest returns were put out, from time to time, at the windows of the office, and all day long one might see groups or single observers coming, going, and pausing to inspect; even children eagerly transmitting the successive items of news from one to another. There was no religious service held in the city, from the most conservative to the most liberal, where there was not some reference made to the incident. In all of these there was reported and as to three or four I can personally testify — a fullness of feeling

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such as touched the heart of every AmeriOn the next morning, whole pages of the country newspapers, usually so barren of American items, were crowded with reports of Sunday services in various towns and villages. Driving through the country, in any direction, during those sorrowful days, one saw mourning flags here and there, on the streets, on public buildings, and before private houses. In London the very omnibus drivers sometimes carried them. We were constantly told that no European sovereign's death had ever brought forth so much testimonial of grief, and we could well believe it. No American who happened to be in England during that experience can ever again doubt the depth and reality of English and American cousinship.

Thomas Wentworth Higginson.

VERSES TO COLONEL THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON

ON HIS EIGHTIETH BIRTHDAY.

PREACHER of a liberal creed,
Pioneer in Freedom's cause;
Ever prompt to take the lead
In behalf of saner laws,
Still your speech persuasive flows
As the brooks of Helicon.

You have earned a fair repose,
Thomas Wentworth Higginson!

You have never stooped to fear
Taunt of opulence or place,
Smug convention's frosty sneer,
Fashion's elegant grimace.
In your youthful vision pure
Truth a constellation shone.
Truth is still your cynosure,
Thomas Wentworth Higginson.

Throbbing with indignant zeal,
Lawlessly you sought to save
From the law's relentless seal
Burns the fugitive, a slave.

Your indictment came to naught,
For some flaw was hit upon.
Time is an enshrining court,
Thomas Wentworth Higginson.

Wounded where the bravest fell
To redeem your fellow men;
Working by the double spell
Of your eloquence and pen;
Now that eighty years are scored,
Busy souls may pause to con.
'Twas the service of the Lord,
Thomas Wentworth Higginson.

You have printed many lines.
To inspire an eager age.
Counsel wholesome as our pines,
Timely essays keen and sage.
Memories of "Oldport Days "
Which we love to dwell upon,
With your "Cheerful Yesterdays,"
Thomas Wentworth Higginson.

Eighty years are but a crown
When the soul is true and kind,
And sparse locks of grizzled brown
Grace a vigorous active mind.
Soldier, patriot, and seer,
Writer, scholar, gentleman,

To the native heart more dear

For the gauntlet which you ran
In pursuit of many a goal

Which the creeping world condemned;
Aspiration kept your soul,

And you feared not to offend.

Lo! amid your autumn leaves

What men scorned now truth appears,
And your dreams are bearing sheaves
In the harvest of your years.

Preacher of a liberal creed,
Pioneer in Freedom's cause;
Ever prompt to take the lead
In behalf of saner laws,

Still your speech persuasive flows
As the brooks of Helicon.

You have earned a fair repose,
Thomas Wentworth Higginson!

Robert Grant.

VOL. XCIII.

NO. 556.

13

IS COMMERCIALISM IN DISGRACE?

IT must be admitted that a certain ignominy rests upon "Commercialism" "Commercialism" as that term is commonly used. It is not merely that, in the recent months, we have witnessed something like a national outburst of mingled indignation and cynicism because the poker mask has been torn from certain giddy schemes of the "high finance." Such obloquy as exists dates from days older than Christianity. Neither Plato nor Cicero conceals his scorn of the trader. So long as the heroic energies of the race were given to war, it was inevitable that some odium should be associated with mercantile pursuits. These obscure callings then brought no splendor of social distinction. They were honestly believed to be squalid occupations. Every enlarged privilege of the trader had to be gained by cunning, by bribes, or by slavish importunities. There is quite enough humiliating economic history in our own civil war to make this clear. A man of science in the employ of the Government went to Mr. Lincoln, in 1863, to tell him how the large contractors were debauching our politicians and fleecing the Government. Mr. Lincoln heard his story, but at its end surprised the visitor by saying, "Mr. I know all that and a good deal more, but to stop this thieving would stop the war."

Every gluttonous passion for gain had so instantly allied itself with the desperate practical needs to which war gives rise, that to stop the looting was to imperil the work of the army in the field. The financial orgies connected with modern wars in Russia, France, and England are well known. Even of the German war of 1870, a Berlin banker has said that the secret history of supplying the army at that time would, if allowed to be published, shock the whole Fatherland. If this be true to-day, it is easy

to understand how business methods must have suffered in ages that were prevailingly military.

It is less clear why the reproach should appear among the scholastic economists who had come to disapprove of war and to recognize the social service of trade. Yet a world of proof is at hand that the trader had a sorry task to account for himself morally. The ethical censure was severest against those whose main occupation it was to take interest on moneys, and it was long before usury was distinguished from interest. In spite of civil laws, as late as the fourteenth century the church prohibited usury on moral grounds. Aquinas condemns it as against nature and all precepts of religion, while Dante in the Inferno has the usurers in his low seventh circle of Hell. One might charge interest to an enemy as a means of punishing him,

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A breed of barren metal of his friend?
But lend it rather to thine enemy."

If the military era be thought to characterize race effort until the modern industrial régime fairly begins, this would go far to account for these earlier disgraces of money-getting as a primary occupation. It is the soldier in Napoleon that taunts England with being a nation of shopkeepers. It was meant in derision, and was taken in the polite world as an insult. Even Ruskin delights to hold up the soldier as a gallant figure, in comparison with which the trader is but a shabby

creature.

Yet this conflict between military and industrial ideals but partially explains the aversion to commercialism. Other hostilities have arisen which, in their origin, are quite apart from this tradition of war versus peace. Three terms are

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