soil from the rule of the foreigner! I have shared in such an attempt. And," continued the Italian, mournfully, "recalling now all the evil passions it arouses, all the ties it dissolves, all the blood that it commands to flow, all the healthful industry it arrests, all the madmen that it arms, all the victims that it dupes, I question whether one man really honest, pure, and humane, who has once gone through such an ordeal, would ever hazard it again, unless he was assured that the victory was certain, ay, and the object for which he fights not to be wrested from his hands amidst the uproar of the elements that the battle has released." The Italian paused, shaded his brow with his hand, and remained long silent. Then, gradually resuming his ordinary tone, he continued: * Revolutions that have no definite objects made clear by the positive experience of history, revolutions, in a word, that aim less at substituting one law or one dynasty for another, than at changing the whole scheme of society, have been little attempted by real statesmen. Even Lycurgus is proved to be a myth who never existed. Such organic changes are but in the day-dreams of philosophers who lived apart from the actual world, and whose opinions (though generally they were very benevolent, good sort of men, and wrote in an elegant poetical style) one would no more take on a plain matter of life than one would look upon Virgil's Eclogues as a faithful picture of the ordinary pains and pleasures of the peasants who tend our sheep. Read them as you would read poets, and they are delightful. But attempt to shape the world according to the poetry, and fit yourself for a madhouse. The farther off the age is from the realization of such projects, the more these poor philosophers have indulged them. Thus, it was amidst the saddest corruption of court manners that it became the fashion in Paris to sit for one's picture, with a crook in one's hand, as Alexis or Daphne. Just as liberty was fast dying out of Greece, and the successors of Alexander were founding their monarchies, and Rome was growing up to crush in its iron grasp all states save its own, Plato withdraws his eyes from the world, to open them in his dreamy Atlantis. Just in the grimmest period of English history, with the ax hanging over his head, Sir Thomas More gives * LYCURGUS. A famous Spartan lawgiver, supposed to have lived about 850 B. C. See Plutarch's Lives. + Plato's idea of a perfect state is unfolded in the Laws and the Republic. you his Utopia. * Just when the world is to be the theater of a new Sesostris, the sages of France tell you that the age is too enlightened for war, that man is henceforth to be governed by pure reason and live in a paradise. Very pretty reading all this to a man like me, Lenny, who can admire and smile at it. But to you, to the man who has to work for his living, to the man who thinks it would be so much more pleasant to live at his ease in a phalanstery † than to work eight or ten hours a day; to the man of talent and action and industry, whose future is invested in that tranquillity and order of a state in which talent and action and industry are a certain capital; why, the great bankers had better encourage a theory to upset the system of banking! Whatever disturbs society, yea, even by a causeless panic, much more by an actual struggle, falls first upon the market of labor, and thence affects prejudicially every department of intelligence. In such times the arts are arrested, literature is neglected, people are too busy to read anything save appeals to their passions. And capital, shaken in its sense of security, no longer ventures boldly through the land, calling forth all the energies of toil and enterprise, and extending to every workman his reward. Now, Lenny, take this piece of advice. You are young, clever, and aspiring: men rarely succeed in changing the world; but a man seldom fails of success if he lets the world alone, and resolves to make the best of it. You are in the midst of the great crisis of your life; it is the struggle between the new desires knowledge excites, and that sense of poverty, which those desires convert either into hope and emulation or into envy and despair. I grant that it is an up-hill work that lies before you; but don't you think it is always easier to climb a mountain than it is to level it? These books call on you to level the mountain; and that moun * UTOPIA. (See note, page 317.) This work, named from a king Utopus, written in Latin, was published at Louvain in 1516. The first English edition, translated by Robynson, was published in London in 1551. Bishop Burnet's translation appeared in 1684. Hallam Says: "The Republic of Plato no doubt furnished More with the germ of his perfect society: but it would be unreasonable to deny him the merit of having struck out the fiction of its real existence from his own fertile imagination; and it is manifest that some of his most distinguished successors in the same walk of romance, especially Swift, were largely indebted to his reasoning as well as inventive talents. Those who read the Utopia in Burnet's translation may believe that they are in Brobdingnag; so similar is the vein of satirical humor and easy language. If false and impracticable theories are found in the Utopia (and, perhaps, he knew them to be such), this is in a much greater degree true of the Platonic republic." In a note to a later edition of his Literary History, Hallam qualifies the assertion that More borrowed the germ of his Utopia from Plato, and says, "Neither the Republic nor the Laws of Plato bear any resemblance to the Utopia." Lord Bacon's treatise on the same subject, The New Atlantis, a Fragment, was published in 1635, and Swift's Gulliver's Travels in 1726-27. PHALANSTERY. An organized community of socialists. tain is the property of other people, subdivided amongst a great many proprietors and protected by law. At the first stroke of the pickax it is ten to one but what you are taken up for a trespass. But the path up the mountain is a right of way uncontested. You may be safe at the summit before (even if the owners are fools enough to let you) you could have leveled a yard. It is more than two thousand years ago," quoth the doctor, "since poor Plato began to level it, and the mountain is as high as ever! " Thus saying, Riccabocca came to the end of his pipe, and stalking thoughtfully away, left Leonard Fairfield trying to extract light from the smoke. SURRENDER OF GRENADA. DAY dawned upon Grenada, and the beams of the winter sun, smiling away the clouds of the past night, played cheerily upon the murmuring waves of the Xenil and the Darro. Alone, upon a balcony commanding a view of the beautiful landscape, stood Boabdil,* the last of the Moorish kings. He had sought to bring to his aid all the lessons of the philosophy he had so ardently cultivated. What are we," said the musing prince, "that we should fill the earth with ourselves, we kings! Earth resounds with the crash of my falling throne; on the ear of races unborn the echo will live prolonged. But what have I lost? Nothing that was necessary to my happiness, my repose; nothing save the source of all my wretchedness, the Marah of my life! Shall I less enjoy heaven and earth, or thought and action, or man's more material luxuries of food and sleep, the common and cheap desires of all? At the worst, I sink but to a level with chiefs and princes; I am but leveled with those whom the multitude admire and envy. . . . . But it is time to depart." So saying, he descended to the court, flung himself on his barb, and, with a small and saddened train passed through the gate which we yet survey, by a blackened and crumbling tower, overgrown with vines and ivy; thence, amid gardens, now appertaining to the convent of the victor faith, he took his mournful and unnoticed way. When he came to the middle of the hill that rises above those gar *BOABDIL. The last Moorish king of Granada. Ferdinand of Aragon dethroned him, 1491. Boabdil returned to Africa, and died about 1536. For nearly eight centuries the Moors had held possession of Granada, it being the last province of the Peninsula recovered by the Christians. The reader will find a delightful history of this romantic country and its perpetual wars in Irving's Conquest of Granada. dens, the steel of the Spanish armor gleamed upon him, as the detachment sent to occupy the palace marched over the summit in steady order and profound silence. At the head of the vanguard rode, upon a snow-white palfrey, the Bishop of Avila, followed by a long train of barefooted monks. They halted as Boabdil approached, and the grave bishop saluted him with the air of one who addresses an infidel and an inferior. With the quick sense of dignity common to the great, and yet more to the fallen, Boabdil felt, but resented not the pride of the ecclesiastic. "Go, Christian," said he, mildly; "the gates of the Alhambra are open, and Allah has bestowed the palace and the city upon your king. May his virtues atone the faults of Boabdil!" So saying, and waiting no answer, he rode on, without looking to the right or the left. The Spaniards also pursued their way. : The sun had fairly risen above the mountains, when Boabdil and his train beheld, from the eminence on which they were, the whole armament of Spain; and at the same moment, louder than the tramp of horse or the clash of arms, was heard distinctly the solemn chant of Te Deum, which preceded the blaze of the unfurled and lofty standards. Boabdil, himself still silent, heard the groans and acclamations of his train he turned to cheer or chide them, and then saw, from his own watch-tower, with the sun shining full upon its pure and dazzling surface, the silver cross of Spain. His Alhambra was already in the hands of the foe; while beside that badge of the holy war waved the gay and flaunting flag of St. Jago, the canonized Mars of the chivalry of Spain. At that sight the king's voice died within him; he gave the rein to his barb, impatient to close the fatal ceremonial, and slackened not his speed till almost within bow-shot of the first rank of the army. Never had Christian war assumed a more splendid and imposing aspect. Far as the eye could reach extended the glittering and gorgeous lines of that goodly power, bristling with sun-lighted spears and blazoned banners; while beside murmured and glowed and danced the silver and laughing Xenil, careless what lord should possess, for his little day, the banks that bloomed by its everlasting course. By a small mosque halted the flower of the army. Surrounded by the arch-priests of that mighty hierarchy, the peers and princes of a court that rivaled the Roland of Charlemagne, was seen the kingly form of Ferdinand himself, with Isabel at his right hand, and the high-born dames of Spain, relieving, with their gay colors and sparkling gems, the sterner splendor of the crested helmet and polished mail. Within sight of the royal group, Boabdil halted, composed his aspect so as best to conceal his soul, and a little in advance of his scanty train, but never in mien and majesty more a king, the son of Abdallah met his haughty conqueror. At the sight of his princely countenance and golden hair, his comely and commanding beauty, made more touching by youth, a thrill of compassionate admiration ran through that assembly of the brave and fair. Ferdinand and Isabel slowly advanced to meet their late rival, their new subject; and as Boabdil would have dismounted, the Spanish king placed his hand upon his shoulder. "Brother and prince," said he, "forget thy sorrows; and may our friendship hereafter console thee for reverses against which thou hast contended as a hero and a king; resisting man, but resigned at length to God." 66 ac Boabdil did not affect to return this bitter but unintentional mockery of compliment. He bowed his head, and remained a moment silent; then motioning to his train, four of his officers approached, and, kneeling beside Ferdinand, proffered to him, upon a silver buckler, the keys of the city. "O king!" then said Boabdil, cept the keys of the last hold which has resisted the arms of Spain. The empire of the Moslem is no more. Thine are the city and the people of Grenada; yielding to thy prowess, they yet confide in thy mercy." "They do well," said the king; "our promises shall not be broken. But since we know the gallantry of Moorish cavaliers, not to us, but to gentler hands, shall the keys of Grenada be surrendered." Thus saying, Ferdinand gave the keys to Isabel, who would have addressed some soothing flatteries to Boabdil, but the emotion and excitement were too much for her compassionate heart, heroine and queen though she was; and when she lifted her eyes upon the calm and pale features of the fallen monarch, the tears gushed from them irresistibly, and her voice died in murmurs. A faint flush overspread the features of Boabdil, and there was a momentary pause of embarrassment, which the Moor was the first to break. "Fair queen," said he, with mournful and pathetic dignity, “thou canst read the heart that thy generous sympathy touches and subdues: this is my last, but not least glorious conquest. But I detain ye; let not my aspect cloud your triumph. Suffer me to say farewell." Farewell, my brother," replied Ferdinand, "and may fair fortune go with you! Forget the past!" Boabdil smiled bitterly, saluted the royal pair with profound respect and silent reverence, and rode |