that last year's taxes will continue; if, afterwards, he thinks of making an alteration, he requires a report on that too. If he has to renew Exchequer bills, or operate anyhow in the City, he takes the opinion, oral or written, of the ablest and most responsible person at the National Debt Office, and the ablest and most responsible at the Treasury. Mr. Gladstone, by far the greatest Chancellor of the Exchequer of this generation, one of the greatest of the very greatest of any generation, has often gone out of his way to express his obligation to these responsible skilled advisers. The more a man knows himself, the more habituated he is to action in general, the more sure he is to take and to value responsible counsel emanating from ability and suggested by experience. That this principle brings good fruit is certain. We have by unequivocal admission-the best budget in the world. Why should not the rest of our administration be as good if we did but apply the same method to it? WALTER BAGEHOT. WALT WHITMAN. THERE is as yet nothing distinctive in American literature except its tendency. This is interesting, because it is toward a reproduction of some of the characteristics hitherto peculiar to the earliest literature of the East. That the tints and splendours of the Oriental should begin to re-appear in the Occidental mind, is as manifest as it is suggestive. The passion for Oriental Scriptures in America was already active when the transcendentalists of Boston recognised it twenty-five years ago, and responded to it in the pages of their magazine, the Dial, which contained in each number an important chapter of "Ethnical Scriptures." Mr. Emerson reproduced many fine thoughts from Hafiz, Saadi, and the "Redekunste" and other Persian transcripts of Von Hammer. Thoreau, naturalist and scholar, passed his life in the woods as a devout Yogi, studying the Baghavat Geeta and the Puranas. Other miners of this old vein, as Brooks and Alger, scattered through the country orient pearls from "Wisdom of the Brahmin" and "Grains of Incense," which were hungrily caught up by the multitude. I could quote here worthy verses from several young poets of America, to show that the direction I have ascribed to the Occidental mind is genuine, and as free from mere imitativeness as from affectation; but my purpose at present is to give some account of a singular genius whose writings, although he certainly had no acquaintance with Oriental literature, have given the most interesting illustration of it, besides being valuable in other respects. It was about ten years ago that literary circles in and around Boston were startled by the tidings that Emerson-whose incredulity concerning American books was known to be as profound as that of Sydney Smith-had discovered an American poet. Emerson had been for many years our literary banker; paper that he had inspected, coin that had been rung on his counter, would pass safely anywhere. On his table had been laid one day a queerly-shaped book entitled, "Leaves of Grass. By Walt Whitman." There was also in the front the portrait of a middle-aged man in the garb of a working-man. The Concord philosopher's feeling on perusing this book was expressed in a private letter to its author, which I quote from memory:- "At first I rubbed my eyes to find if this new sunbeam might not be an illusion... I greet you at the beginning of a great career, which yet must have had a long foreground somewhere for such a start." Toward no other American, toward no contemporary excepting Carlyle, had Emerson ever used such strong expressions as these. The writer to whom they had been addressed at once printed a new edition of his poems, placing on the back of it, "I greet you at the beginning of a great career.R. W. Emerson." This and the publication of the entire letter at the end of the volume annoyed Mr. Emerson very much, for it was a formidable book for any gentleman to carry by his endorsement into general society. Mr. Emerson was afterwards convinced, I believe, that Walt Whitman had printed his letter in ignorance of the bienséances in such cases, but he was destined to hear of some unpleasant results from it. Walt Whitman's book was, in fact, unreadable in many of those circles to which the refined thinker's name at once bore it; and many were the stories of the attempts to read it in mixed companies. One grave clergyman made an effort to read it aloud to some gentlemen and ladies, and only broke down after surprising his company considerably. Nevertheless, the book continued to be studied quietly, and those who read it ceased to wonder that it should have kindled the sage who had complained that the American freeman is "timid, imitative, tame," from listening too long to "the courtly muses of Europe." The plainness of speech in "Leaves of Grass" is indeed biblical; there is, too, a startling priapism running through it; nay, squeamish readers must needs hold their noses, for the writer does not hesitate to bring the slop-bucket into the drawing-room to show that the chemic laws work therein also; yet from its first sentence, "I celebrate myself,” there starts forth an endless procession of the forms and symbols of life-now funeral, now carnival, or again a masquerade of nations, cities, epochs, or the elements, natural and human-fascinating the eye with wonder or dread. To these terrible eyes Maya surrenders; faces, forms, skeletons, are unsheathed. Here are the autographs of New York, and of the prairies, savannahs, Ohio, Mississippi, and all powers, good and evil. There is much that is repulsive to the ordinary mind in these things and in the poems that really express them; but as huge reptiles help to fashion the pedestal of man, as artists find in griffins and crouching animal forms the fundamental vitality upon which the statue or pillar may repose, one might not. unreasonably find in the wild and grotesque forms of Walt Whitman's chants, so instinct with life, the true basis of any shaft, not the duplicate of any raised elsewhere, that American thought is to raise. As my readers generally may not have seen, or may not have access to, the "Leaves of Grass," I quote here some characteristic passages from the book : : From the Proto-Leaf. "Take my leaves, America! Make welcome for them everywhere, for they are your own offspring; Surround them, East and West! for they would surround you; And you, precedents! connect lovingly with them, for they connect lovingly with you. "Omnes! Omnes! Let others ignore what they may, I make the poem of evil also-I commemorate that part also, I am myself just as much evil as good-And I say there is in fact no evil, Or if there is, I say it is just as important to you, to the earth, or to me, as anything else. "O expanding and swift! O henceforth, Elements, breeds, adjustments, turbulent, quick, and audacious, A world primal again. Vistas of glory incessant and branching, New politics-new literatures and religions-new inventions and arts. Walt Whitman. "Swiftly arose and spread around me the peace, and joy, and knowledge that pass all the art and argument of earth, And I know that the hand of God is the promise of my own, And I know that the Spirit of God is the brother of my own, And that all the men ever born are also my brothers, and the women my sisters and lovers, And that a Kelson of the creation is love, And limitless are leaves, stiff or drooping in the fields, And brown ants in the little wells beneath them, And mossy scabs of the worm-fence, and heaped stones, alder, mullen, and pokeweed. "A child said, What is the grass?' fetching it to me with full hands; A scented gift and remembrancer, designedly dropped, Bearing the owner's name someway in the corners, that we may see and remark, and say whose? "Or I guess the grass is itself a child, the produced babe of the vegetation. *"Or I guess it is a uniform hieroglyphic, And it means, sprouting alike in broad zones and narrow zones, Kanuck, Tuckahoe, Congressman, Cuff, I give them the same, I receive them the same. "And now it seems to me the beautiful uncut hair of graves. "Why should I pray? Why should I venerate and be ceremonious? "Having pried through the strata, analysed to a hair, counselled with doctors, and calculated close, I find no sweeter fat than sticks to my own bones. "I know I am august. I do not trouble my spirit to vindicate itself or be understood, I see that the elementary laws never apologise, I reckon I behave no prouder than the level I plant my home by, after all. "I exist as I am-that is enough. If no other in the world be aware, I sit content, And if each and all be aware, I sit content. "One world is aware, and by far the largest to me, and that is myself, And whether I come to my own to-day, or in ten thousand or ten million years, I can cheerfully take it now, or with equal cheerfulness I can wait. "Immense have been the preparations for me, Faithful and friendly the arms that have helped me, Cycles ferried my cradle, rowing and rowing like faithful boatmen. They sent influences to look after what was to hold me. Before I was born out of my mother, generations guided me. My embryo has never been torpid-nothing could overlay it. For it the nebula cohered to an orb, The long low strata piled to rest it on, Vast vegetables gave it sustenance, Monstrous sauroids transported it in their mouths, and deposited it with caro. All forces have been steadily employed to complete and delight me, Now I stand on this spot with my soul." "The spotted hawk swoops by and accuses me-he complains of my gab and my loitering. I too am not a bit tamed-I too am untranslatable, I sound my barbaric yawp over the roofs of the world." "I too, Paumanok, I too have bubbled up, floated the measureless float, and been washed on your shores; I too am but a trail of drift and débris, I too leave little wrecks upon you, you fish-shaped island. "I throw myself upon your breast, my father, I cling to you so that you cannot unloose me, I hold you so firm, till you answer me something. "Kiss me, my father, Touch me with your lips, as I touch those I love, Breathe to me, while I hold you close, the secret of the wondrous murmuring I envy, For I fear I shall become crazed, if I cannot emulate it, and utter myself as well as it. "Sea-raff! crook-tongued waves! O, I will yet sing, some day, what you have said to me." "O truth of the earth! O truth of things! I am determined to press my way toward you, Sound your voice! I scale mountains, or dive in the sea after you. Voices. "O what is it in me that makes me tremble so at voices? Surely whoever speaks to me in the right voice, him or her I shall follow, as the waters follow the moon, silently, with fluid steps, anywhere around the globe. Now I believe that all waits for the right voices; |