Lowell

Tbe world, says Woodrow Wilson in The Atlantic, is apt to esteem that man most hnmau wl.o luis his qualities in a certain exaggeralion, whose courage ia passionate, wbose geuerosity is without deliberatio, whoso just actiou is without prerncditution, whose spirit runs toward its favcrite objects with au infectious and reckless ardor, whose wisdouj is no ohild of slow prudence. We love Achules inore thau Diotnedes, and Ulysses not at all. Bnt these are standards left ever froia a ruder state of : oiety. We shonld have passed by this time the Homeric stage of mind - should have héroes suited to onr age. Nay, we have erected different staudards and do makc a different choice when we see in auy man fulfillmeut of our real ideáis. Let a modern instance serve as test. Could any man hesitate to say that Abraham Lincoln was more human than William Lloyd Garrisou? Does not every one know that it was the practical Free Soilers whomadeemancipation possible, and not the hot, impracticable abolitiouists; that the country was infinitely mort) moved by Lincoln 's températe sagacity than by auy man's enthusiasm, instinctively trusted the man who saw the whole situation and kept his balance, and instiuctively held off from those who refused to see more than one thing? We know bow serviceable the intense and headlong agitator was in bringing to their feet men fit for actiou, but we feel uneasy while he lives and vouchsafe him our full sympathy only when he is dead. . We know that the genial forces of nature which work daily, eqnably and without violence are inflnitely more serviceable, inflnitely more admirable, than the rude violence of the storm, however necessary or excellent the pnrificatiou it may have wrought. Should we seek to name the most human man aroong those who led the nation to its struggle with slavery, and yet was no statesman, we shonld of course name Lowell. We know that his humor went further than any man's passion toward setting tolerant men a-tingle with the new impulses of the day. We naturally hold back frora those who are intemperate and can never stop to srnile and are deeply rassured to see a twinkle in a reformer's eye. We are glad to see earnest men langh. It breaks the strain.