tisements, real original Raphaels, Titians, Guidos, and Salvator Rosas, in every one of these wonderful collections.

But grant, it may be said, that painting should be fostered as well as literature, as well as poetry and song-why not let it take its chance with the rest? Why form an association to further its objects? This objection overlooks one material difference. The book, when it is written, is printed. That work of art is multiplied into thousands of copies, which easily come within the reach of all who choose to read. It is not so with the painting. It is too expensive for the most of us to buy. What then so proper as a joint stock company like this, to trade for pictures, something better than furs from the North-west coast, or pearls from Ceylon a lottery, the only good one that I ever heard of, where for five dollars one may draw a prize worth five hundred,-worth far more in the pleasure it will give. Five hundred are often spent for a dinner, a supper, an entertainment, whose pleasure passes and perishes in a night; while a picture may, in a far higher way, please us and our children after us, hundreds of years. Nor in any other way can pictures be distributed among the mass of the people. But for this they must be locked up from the public in the dwellings of the opulent. A similar institution in Edinburgh is spreading fine paintings all over Scotland. One such painting in a country village is a blessing to all its inhabitants. It is more a curiosity there it is more looked at and studied. A few such teachers in a village would spread an influence all around them. They would speak from the silent walls to passing generations. It may be thought extravagant to say it, but I certainly should look for a higher taste and refinement in such a place.

And of what especially would paintings be teachers? I answer, of what in this country we most especially need. They would be teachers of the beau ideal, the beautiful, the sublime. This is the special province of the arts of design. Although they labour under some difficulties and defects compared with writing, yet they certainly can portray a beauty, a sublimity, which the pen cannot; or at any rate, they appeal more directly, and by means more appropriate, to the sense of beauty and grandeur. Now, this appeal, I repeat, is precisely what our country wants, both as a new and as a republican country. In the one character, it has no time-honoured structures, no old ruins, and fewer venerable associations, to address the eye and the heart. In the other, it has parted with many titles to respect and reverence, be they right or wrong-monarchy, a court, a nobility. By all means are enthusiasm and veneration to be cultivated here. We want them to meet the all-surrounding, everywhere-penetrating tendencies to the practical and the palpable, which, like our railroads, are binding the country in chains of iron; we want such aid to lighten the pains-taking of gain, and to assuage the anxieties of ambition.

I do not set myself against the practical spirit of the country, nor its gainful industry; it is all very well in its place; I only say that it needs to be modified by the infusion of other principles, and that it is by such united influences only that we can expect to lay the foundation and build the superstructure of a deep and solid, a fair and beautiful national character. Let religion, let preaching, let literature come with its help to this work; and let art, too, come, with its wonder-working and wonder-inspiring hand. Let the sense of beauty be enshrined in the heart of the people. I would rather that one silent, calm picture of martyr

like heroism or of saintly beauty, sunk into the public heart here, than to know of some great and agitating speculation, which had put a million of gold into the public coffer.

The artist has in this country-which so much needs him-I believe, a glorious field. He has not princes indeed for his patrons; but he has a public of educated, intelligent, and increasing millions. Let him not distrust it; let him not be wanting, and I promise him, that we will not be wanting. The human heart is for ever the same; the same now that it was in the days of Vinci and Raphael. Let him not think that it is turned to stone. Or, if he thinks so, let him try it once; let him strike it with the rod of genius, and if it is not dead-and it is not dead-the waters will flow; and they will fertilize and beautify the land in which he lives and in which he shall die; die, and yet die not for no noble deed shall be planted in the quickened and springing life of this youthful country, but green bays and bright flowers shall rise from it, and flourish around it, in perpetual and everlasting memorial.

XVII.

ON THE MORAL CHARACTER OF GOVERNMENT.

FOR IT IS THE MINISTER OF GOD TO THEE FOR GOOD.-Romans xiii. 4.

THIS is said of political Government. And I wish to invite your meditations this evening, my brethren, to the moral character of this great function of Government. I have long thought that this subject demands the attention of the pulpit, and especially of the American pulpit.

Of the pulpit, I say, in the first place, and of the pulpit everywhere; for what is the office of the preacher, if it is not to speak of everything that touches the national conscience, the national morality; to speak, among other things, of that regard to the common weal which should come as the sanctity and bond of religion to a people? I do not advocate a partisan pulpit. I think that the line should be distinctly drawn between party questions and the general moral questions; and that with the former the pulpit has nothing to do. The preacher indeed has a right to his opinion upon these questions, and he has a right to express it in proper places and at proper times. But the season of public worship is not the time, and the pulpit is not the place; for this plain reason, that all political parties meet here on ground that is understood to be common, and all have built up the pulpit for their common edification, and not as a post for attack

upon any; and I must think that he very ill understands his place who employs it to drive away either portion of his hearers, indignant and angry from the sanctuary. But with regard to the moral function of Government, with regard to its fidelity to the people and its duty to God, the case is different. And if religious instruction-so to define the province of the pulpit—if religion, in other words, has anything to do with right and wrong, the case is plain. For what power in the world can do right or can do wrong, upon a scale so vast and stupendous as the Government? Where is there such an accumulation of moral actions and responsibilities as in the Government? What hand upon earth so holds in its grasp the weal or woe of millions living and of millions unborn, as the Government?

And to consider all this, I say, in the next place, is especially the duty of the American pulpit. Because the whole people here to whom the pulpit speaks, acts, morally or immorally, through the Government. I do not loosely say that the people is the Government, or that "the people makes the Government." We are born under a certain political Constitution. We are born members of a State; that was not for us to choose or to make; and we are bound to be in subjection to the powers that be, I conceive, by considerations far superior to our mere will. Our form of Government is a fabric of power, framed by the wisdom, and cemented in the blood of our fathers; it spreads its protecting shadow over millions of people; and unless some flagrant cause is shown for its subversion, unless some "right of revolution" can be made out, obedience to it, I hold, to be a religious duty, a duty to the God of nations, to the Governor of the world. But this state of things being established, we have ye