"There is the unity of the Church. I yearn for it, I pray for it. I long to be united to my Methodist brother, and my Episcopal brother, and my Baptist brother, and my Calvinist brother,my Trinitarian brother, of every name and sort.

"In the unity of God, the unity that Christ prayed for, in the unity that really subsists between all goodness, I feel that I can be, I feel that I ought to be. Heaven speed the time when I shall be!....

"Standing on the eminence I now do, I seem to see the narrow horizon of our mortality extending away, and merging in the horizon of immortality. I seem to see, travelling up this steep of the Divine Unity, myriads of the human race, on their way to the seats of eternal blessedness, growing out of this unity of heaven and earth; I seem to see heaven encompassing earth, and seeking to irradiate our pilgrimage, and to breathe into our imperfect life some of its own loveliness and beauty.

"Clouds lower, and tempest falls, and darkness gathers; but God is the same, yesterday, to-day, and for ever his unitary love and goodness continue on, and by and by it will shine out as the sun.

"Our circle is wide. It includes all good men and women under heaven; it loves all whom God loves; it sends all good men to heaven, without regard to their speculative notions.

"We, as Unitarians, as liberal Christians, stand in the very centre around which, here on the earth, the great circle of the communion of saints must of necessity sweep; we are most peculiarly in the heart of the current of the Holy Spirit, along which, if I may so say, God is borne, and Christ, and the holy angels, and all the spirits of the just.' pp. 280-283.

But

We have no room to continue these extracts from a book which will prove invaluable. We leave them with the mortifying consciousness that they are so disjointed and few, as to show neither the book nor the man. this is no great matter. The book will find its way into so many lives, it will soothe so much distress, it will set clear so many doubts, that we are more than ever reconciled to the loss of his unwritten books, of which he loved to speak to his friends, and for which he was always preparing.

For, in fact, his plans of literary effort extended over everything. He was modest as to his own powers, and yet, if he could persuade no one else to write what he wanted written, he would attempt it himself, or at least lay out some plan for it in future. And he wrote always, to gratify any pride of authorship, but to meet what VOL. LVIII.4TH S. VOL. XXIII. NO. I.

7

not

seemed to him the necessity of the case,

because the

book must be written. The enthusiasm with which "Margaret" was received by critics seeking for a real piece of "American literature," did not interest him or gratify him nearly so far as the response it has won from those who had been wandering in the dark like Margaret, and were glad of her finger to help them to the light. The newspaper critics wondered what he wrote "Richard Edney " for. He did not write it for them. He did not write it for reputation. He wrote it for country boys who have occasion to go to seek their living in large towns. It was just like him, that he wrote to his publishers to have part of the edition bound in "red cambric," that it might work its way, in cheap auction-rooms, into the hands of those for whom he made it. Certain people were troubled about " Philo," for fear it compromised his reputation. He did not care whether it did or not. They were worried because it was arranged on the machinery of Festus and Faust. Of course it was. But it was written, not to make a reputation, and with great indifference as to machinery, to show what is meant by "the second coming of Christ"; and we venture the sug gestion, that any course of criticism on that subject is incomplete without a reference to this book, as a monograph upon it. With just the same spirit, he had in his mind a course of books for children, which he was anxious to write and publish, because he thought there was need of them. He had a dream of some day making out a sketch from the history of the Arians; convinced as he was that history would show that in the reign of the Arian emperors and Spanish kings civilization regularly advanced, to fall back when they were driven from power. At one of our conventions he had just started on a speech full of interest, which was turning on this theme, when he was cut short by a suggestion that it was almost time for dinner! How bitterly mortified he seemed, as he walked home, that he should have intruded on so essential a duty! No plan was too wide for his industry to aim at. And when he went to work, the aim of his work was simply that of which we speak, the real desire to bring light to the world, if it would only choose to read.

It happened, therefore, that the frameworks of his

1855.]

Curtis's History of the Constitution.

75

book's were quaint, unartistic, and wholly different from anything people were used to. They were all in some sense contributions to his own biography, the direct results or pictures of his own life. And it proved that his experience as a man was often so confounded with his projects as an author, that the careless reader pushed the book by as a "strange thing," of which he "could make nothing"; and, because careless, lost in this way the very influence which the author hoped to convey.

In this biography, -now that his unconsciously written papers speak to show us his life, with no story but his woven in, there is no such difficulty. The boy's cumbrous, stilted letters, the college student's journals and essays, the minister's sermons, and the father's and husband's home, -all come before us here to give the picture, scarcely veiled at all, of a life on fire with the love of Christ and of God. We will not trust ourselves to speak of the value of such a picture, should it reach only two or three lives. We believe it is destined to have an influence far wider. Here is another, who, being dead, yet speaks to us. And the lesson is a simple lesson, unadorned, and therefore not blunted, of personal consecration to the Christian service of God.

E. E. H.

ART. V. CURTIS'S HISTORY OF THE CONSTITUTION.*

It is well known that Mr. Webster designed to write the History of the Organization of the General Government and the Administration of President Washington. To its preparation he had hoped to devote his declining years, when he should finally withdraw from the cares and duties of public life to the cherished solitudes of Marshfield. But the leisure for the accomplishment of this hope never came. His last sickness found him still engaged in the active service of his country, — still bending'

* History of the Origin, Formation, and Adoption of the Constitution of the United States; with Notices of its Principal Framers. By GEORGE TICKNOR CURTIS. In two volumes. Volume I. New York: Harper & Brothers. 1854. 8vo. pp. xxxvi. and 518.

the unconquerable energies of his imperial intellect to the solution of great questions of international policy, or the more momentous questions arising under our domestic relations. Such a work as he proposed would have been a priceless legacy to all future generations. In it would have been garnered up the mature results of that farsighted wisdom, and that profound acquaintance with the true principles of political science, which made him the greatest statesman of modern times. Its narrative would have been everywhere marked by that intimate and thorough knowledge of the secret history of the period, which he possessed in larger measure than any of his contemporaries. Its disquisitions would have been rich with the experience of forty years dedicated to the study of the Constitution in its practical working. Over the whole that spirit of wise and liberal conservatism would have presided which was the crowning glory of his character as an American statesman. His death added another name to the list of those great statesmen who have vainly hoped to write the history of their country. Neither Mr. Fox nor Sir James Mackintosh lived to complete the historical works that engaged their last years. Nor did Mr. Burke's Abridgment even reach the period regarded by Mr. Hallam as the commencement of the constitutional history of England.

Many years since, Mr. Curtis also formed the plan of a work on the origin and establishment of the Constitution, and embracing a part of the period covered by Mr. Webster's proposed History. This plan was submitted to that great man in the last year of his life, and met his warm approval, though no portion of the work itself was ever seen by him. "Being with him alone," says Mr. Curtis, "on an occasion when his physician, after a long consultation, had just left him, he said to me, with an earnestness and solemnity that can never be described or forgotten: You have a future; I have none. You are writing a History of the Constitution. You will write that work; I shall not. Go on, by all means, and you shall have every aid I can give you.'"* His death within a month after this conversation prevented that invaluable aid from being given. But under the sanction of his

*Preface, pp. vii., viii.

great name, and in the full knowledge of those broad and deep principles which guided his political career, Mr. Curtis has applied himself to the important work before him. The first volume of the History thus planned and executed comprises the Constitutional History of the United States, from the Commencement of the Revolution to the Federal Convention of 1787, and fully justifies the high expectation formed of it. The second volume, to be published hereafter, will be devoted to the actual formation of the Constitution.

The theme is a noble one. It has that unity of interest and that dignity in its various details which are essential to the composition of an historical work of the highest order. The narrow limits of time covered by it, the transcendent importance of the events included under it, and the wisdom and virtue of the men who took part in those events, all conspire to render it peculiarly adapted to the purposes of an historian. The creation of a government is the grandest work that can be undertaken by man in his social capacity. But when we consider the difficulties and the dangers more formidable than Scylla and Charybdis- which beset the framers of our Constitution at every step, and when we contemplate the tremendous results that have flowed from their labors, - when we compare the feebleness and imbecility of the old Confederation with the strength and political importance of the Union as it now is, the grandeur of the work accomplished in the formation of the Constitution becomes still more clearly apparent. Nothing ever attempted by man in the exercise of his highest intellectual powers approaches it in dignity or importance, — in the harmonious balance of conflicting agencies, and the successful working of all its parts. The constitution of England has been the slow and painful product of many ages of fierce struggle and of alternate victory and defeat. The constitutions which France has vainly essayed to establish have all signally failed, and left scarcely a trace behind them. Nowhere else, either in ancient or modern times, has the experiment of free, constitutional government been successfully attempted on a scale of equal magnitude.

In the preparation of his History, Mr. Curtis has neg lected none of the advantages his subject offers to a phil