down the orders; and there they were, one hundred and twenty strong, some for little and some for much, some for a single article and some for a dozen articles.

But it is not in camps of long standing that the wounded and sick suffer for want of care or lack of comforts. It is when the base is suddenly changed, when all order is broken up, when there are no tents at hand, when the stores are scattered, nobody knows where, after a great battle perhaps, and the wounded are pouring in upon you like a flood, and when it seems as if no human energy and no mortal capacity of transportation could supply the wants both of the well and the sick, the almost insatiable demands of the battle-field and the equally unfathomable needs of the hospital, it is then that the misery comes, and it is then that the Commission does its grandest work. After the Battles of the Wilderness and Spottsylvania, twenty-five thousand wounded were crowded into Fredericksburg, where but ten thousand were expected. For time supplies of all kinds seemed to be literally exhausted. There were no beds. There was not even straw. There were not surgeons enough nor attendants enough. There was hardly a supply of food. Some found it difficult to get a drop of cold water. Poor, wounded men, who had wearily trudged from the battle-field and taken refuge in a deserted house, remained hours and a day without care, and without seeing the face of any but their wounded comrades. Then the Sanitary Commission sent its hundred and fifty agents to help the overburdened surgeons. Then every morning it despatched its steamer down the Potomac crowded with necessaries and comforts. Then with ceaseless industry its twenty wagons, groaning under their burden, went to and fro over the wretched road from Belle Plain to Fredericksburg. A credible witness says that for several days nearly all the bandages and a large proportion of the hospital supplies came from its treasury. No mind can discern and no tongue can declare what valuable lives

it saved and what sufferings it alleviated. Who shall say that Christian charity has not its triumphs proud as were ever won on battle-field? If the Commission could boast only of its first twenty-four hours at Antietam and Gettysburg and its forty-eight hours at Fredericksburg, it would have earned the everlasting gratitude and praise of all true men.

But is there not a reverse to this picture? Are there no drawbacks to this success? Is there no chapter of abortive plans, of unfaithful agents, of surgeons and attendants appropriating or squandering charitable gifts? These are questions which are often honestly asked, and the doubts which they express or awaken have cooled the zeal and slackened the industry of many an earnest worker. There is no end to the stories which have been put in circulation. I remember a certain mythical blanket which figured in the early part of the war, and which, though despatched to the soldier, was found a few weeks after by its owner adorning the best bed of a hotel in Washington. To be sure, it seemed to have pursued a wandering life, — for now it was sent from the full stores of a lady in Lexington, and now it was stripped perhaps by a poor widow from the bed of her children, and then it was heard from far off in the West, ever seeking, but never reaching, its true destination. Without heeding any such stories, although they have done infinite mischief, I answer to honest queries, that I have no doubt that sometimes the stores of the Commission are both squandered and misappropriated. I do not positively know it; but I am sure that it would be a miracle, if they were not. It would be the first time in human history that so large and varied a business, and extending over such a breadth of country and such a period of time, was transacted without waste. Look at the facts. Here are thousands of United States surgeons and attendants of all ages and characters through whose hands many of these gifts must necessarily go. What wonder, if here and there one should

be found whose principles were weaker than his appetites ? Consider also the temptations. These men are hard-worked, often scantily fed. Every nerve is tried by the constant presence of suffering, and every sense by fetid odors. Would it be surprising, if they sometimes craved the luxuries which were so close at hand? Moreover, the Commission employs hundreds of men, the very best it can get, but it would be too much to ask that all should be models of prudence, watchfulness, and integrity.

I allow, then, that some misappropriation is not improbable. At the same time I do say, that every department is vigilantly watched, and that the losses are trivial, compared with the immense benefits. I do say, emphatically, that to bring a wholesale charge against whole classes, whose members are generally as high-minded and honorable as any other, to accuse them as a body of wretched peculations, is simply false and slanderous. I maintain that fidelity is the rule, and that its reverse is the petty exception; and that it would be in opposition to all rules by which men conduct their lives to suffer such exceptions to influence our conduct, or diminish our contributions to a good cause. In business how often we are harassed by petty dishonesty or great frauds! Nevertheless, the tide of business sweeps on. Why? Because the good so outweighs the evil. The railroad employee is negligent, and some terrible accident occurs. But the railroad keeps on running all the same; for the public convenience and welfare are the law of its life, and private peril and loss but an occasional episode. By the same rule, we support, without misgiving, the Commission, because the good which it certainly does, and the suffering it relieves, in their immensity cover up and put out of sight mistakes, which are incident to all human enterprise, and which are guarded against with all possible vigilance.

But allow all the good which is claimed, and that the good far tran

scends any possible evil, and then we are met by these further questions: Is such an organization necessary? Cannot Government do the work? And if so, ought not Government to do it?

I might with propriety answer: Suppose that Government ought to do the work and does not, shall we fold our hands and let our soldiers suffer? But the truth is, Government does do its duty. Some persons foolishly exaggerate the work of the Commission. They talk as though it were the only salvation of the wounded, as though the Government let everything go, and that, if the Commission and kindred societies did not step in, there would not be so much as a wreck of our army left. Such talk is simply preposterous. The Commission, considered as a free, spontaneous offering of a loyal people' to the cause of our common country, is a wonderful enterprise. The Commission, standing ready to supply any deficiency, to remedy any defect, and to meet any unforeseen emergency, has done a good work that cannot be forgotten. But, compared with what Government expends upon the sick, its resources are nothing. I have not the figures at hand, though I have seen them; and it is hardly too much to say, that, where the society has doled out a penny, the Government has lavished a pound.

No sane defender, therefore, of this' charity supports it on any such ground as that it is the principal benefactor of the soldier. The Commission alone could no more support our hospitals than it could the universe. But the homely adage, “It is best to have two strings to your bow," applies wonderfully to the case. In practical life men act upon this maxim. They like to have an adjunct to the best-working machinery, a sort of reserved power. Every sensible person sees that our mail arrangements furnish to the whole people admirable facilities. Nevertheless, we like to have an express, and occasionally to send letters and packages by it. When the children are sick, there is nothing so good as the advice of the trusted family

physician and the unwearied care of the mother. Yet when the physician has done his work and gone his way, and when the mother is worn out by days of anxiety and nights of watching, we deem it a great blessing, if there is a kind neighbor who will come in, not to assume the work, but to help it on a little. The Commission, looking at the hospitals and the armies from a different point of view, sees much that another overlooks, and in an emergency, when all help is too little, brings fresh aid that is a priceless blessing. To the plain, substantial volume of public appropriations it adds the beautiful supplement of private benefactions. That is all that it pretends to do.

There are some special reflections that bear upon the point which we are considering. This war was sprung upon an unwarlike people. The officers of Government, when they entered upon their work, had no thought of the gigantic burdens which have fallen upon their shoulders. Since the war began, Government, like everybody else, has had to learn new duties, and to learn them amid the stress and perplexity of a great conflict. And among other things, it has been obliged, in some respects, to recast its medical regulations to meet the prodigious enlargement of its medical work. Beyond a doubt, much help, which, on account of this imperfection of the medical code itself, or of the inexperience of many who administered it, was needed by our hospitals at the commencement of the war, is not needed now, and much help that is needed now may not, if the war lasts, be needed in the future. But it takes time to move the machinery of a great state. And when any change is to become the permanent law of public action, it ought to take both time and thought to effect it. You do not wish to alter and re-alter the framework of a state or of a state's activity as you would patch up a ruinous old house. If you work at all in any department, you should wish to work on a massive, well-considered plan, so that what you do may last. It is not likely, therefore, that, in the great field

of suffering which the war has laid open to us, the public ministries will either be so quickly or so perfectly adjusted as to make private ministries a superfluity.

Neither do we reflect enough upon the limitations of human power. We think sometimes of Government as a great living organism of boundless resources. But, after all, in any department of state, what plans, what overlooks, what vitalizes, is one single human mind. And it is not easy to get minds anywhere clear enough and capacious enough for the large duties. It is easy to obtain men who can command a company well. It is not difficult to find those who can control efficiently a regiment. There are many to whom the care of five thousand men is no burden; a few who are adequate to an army corps. But the generals who can handle with skill a hundred thousand men, and make these giant masses do their bidding, are the rare jewels in war's diadem. Even so is it in every department of life. It is perhaps impossible to find a mind which can sweep over the whole field of our medical operations, and prepare for every emergency and avoid every mistake; not because all men are unfaithful or incapable, but because there must be a limit to the most capacious intellect. Looking simply at the structure of the human mind, we might have foreseen, what facts have amply demonstrated, that in a war of such magnitude as that which we are now waging there always must be room for an organization like the Sanitary Commission to do its largest and noblest work.

But, above and beyond all such reflections, there are great national and patriotic considerations which more than justify, yea, demand, the existence of our war charities. Allowing that the outward comfort of the soldier (and who would grant it?) might be accomplished just as well in some other way, - allowing that in a merely sanitary aspect the Government could have done all that voluntary organizations have undertaken, and have done it as well as

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they or better than they, even then we do not allow for a moment that what has been spent has been wasted. What is the Sanitary Commission, and what are kindred associations, but so many bonds of love and kindness to bind the soldier to his home, and to keep him always a loyal citizen in every hope and in every heart-throb? This is the influence which we can least of all afford to lose. He must have been blind who did not see at the outset of the war, that, beyond the immediate danger of the hour, there were other perils. We were trying the most tremendous experiment that was ever tried by any people. Out of the most peaceful of races we were creating a nation of soldiers. In a few months, where there seemed to be scarcely the elements of martial strength, we were organizing an army which was to be at once gigantic and efficient. Who could calculate the effect of such a swift change? The questions many a patriotic heart might have asked were these: When this wicked Rebellion is ended, - when these myriads of our brethren whose lives have been bound up in that wondrous collective life, the life of a great army, shall return to their quiet homes by the hills and streams of New England or on the rolling prairies of the West, will they be able to merge their life again in the simple life of the community out of which they came? Will they find content at the plough, by the loom, in the workshop, in the tranquil labors of civil life? Can they, in short, put off the harness of the soldier, and resume the robe of the citizen? Many a one could have wished to say to every soldier, as he went forth to the war, "Remember, that, if God spares your life, in a few months or a few years you will come back, not officers, not privates, but sons and husbands and brothers, for whom some home is waiting and some human heart throbbing. Never forget that your true home is not in that fort beside those frowning cannon, not on that tented field amid the glory and power of military array, but that it nestles beneath

yonder hill, or stands out in sunshine on some fertile plain. Remember that you are a citizen yet, with every instinct, with every sympathy, with every interest, and with every duty of a citizen."

Can we overestimate the influence of these associations, of these Soldiers'-Aid Societies, rising up in every city and village, in producing just such a state of mind, in keeping the soldier one of us, one of the people? Five hundred thousand hearts following with deep interest his fortunes, - twice five hundred thousand hands laboring for his comfort, millions of dollars freely lavished to relieve his sufferings, millions more of tokens of kindness and good-will going forth, every one of them a message from the home to the camp: what is all this but weaving a strong network of alliance between civil and military life, between the citizen at home and the citizen soldier? If our army is a remarkable body, more pure, more clement, more patriotic than other armies, — if our soldier is everywhere and always a true-hearted citizen,—it is because the army and soldier have not been cast off from public sympathy, but cherished and bound to every free institution and every peaceful association by golden cords of love. The good our Commissions have done in this respect cannot be exaggerated; it is incalculable.

Nor should we forget the influence they have had on ourselves, -the reflex influence which they have been pouring back into the hearts of our people at home, to quicken their patriotism. We often say that the sons and brothers are what the mothers and sisters make them. Can you estimate the electric force which runs like an irresistible moral contagion from heart to heart in a community all of whose mothers and daughters are sparing that they may spend, and learning the value of liberty and country by laboring for them? It does not seem possible, that, amid the divers interests and selfish schemes of men, we ever could have sustained this war, and carried it to a successful issue, had it not been for the moral cement

which these wide-spread philanthropic enterprises have supplied. Every man who has given liberally to support the Commission has become a missionary of patriotism; every woman who has cut and made the garments and rolled the bandages and knit the socks has become a missionary. And so the country has been full of missionaries, true-hearted and loyal, pleading, "Be patient, put up with inconveniences, suffer exactions, bear anything, rather than sacrifice the nationality our fathers bequeathed to us!" And if our country is saved, it will be in no small degree because so many have been prompted by their benevolent activity to take a deep personal interest in the struggle and in the men who are carrying on the struggle.

These national and patriotic influences are the crowning blessings which come in the train of the charities of the war; and they constitute one of

their highest claims to our affection and respect. The unpatriotic utterances which in these latter days so often pain our ears, the weariness of burdens which tempt so many to be ready to accept anything and to sacrifice anything to be rid of them, admonish us that we need another uprising of the people and another re-birth of patriotism; and they show us that we should cherish more and more everything which fosters noble and national sentiments. And when this war is over, and the land is redeemed, and we come to ask what things have strengthened us to meet and overcome our common peril, may we not prophesy that high among the instrumentalities which have husbanded our strength, and fed our patriotism, and knit more closely the distant parts of our land and its divided interests, will be placed the United States Sanitary Commission?

ITS

T took a long while for artists to understand that the Greek face was the ideal face merely to Greek sculptors. During the baser ages of the sculpturesque art, (how far towards our own day the epicycle inclusive of those ages extended it would be invidious for us to say,) sculpture consisted of the nearest imitation of Greek models which was possible of attainment by talents, with an occasional intercalated genius, hampered by prevailing modes. That the Greek face was beautiful, none could doubt. That in the sovereign points of intellect it was the absolute beau-ideal is open to great doubt. Apart from all such questions, the fact of subservience exists. Even Benjamin Robert Haydon, the man who thought himself called to be the æsthetic saviour of the age, knew no other, no better way of making himself master of solid form than by lying down in the cold with a candle before the Elgin marbles. Let not this be mistaken

as a slur upon one of the most devoted men in history, -a man who surely lived, and who, aside from the pangs of poverty, probably died, for the regeneration of Art. We only mean to select an instance preeminent over all that can be mentioned, to show that until a very late date even the most learned men in the Art-world had not cut loose from the fascination of old models, considered not as suggestive, but as dominant. There is nothing in the sculptors of Haydon's period to prove that their view differed essentially from that of the most self-devoted theorist among painters.

. We hold that it has been left for America to complete the æsthetic, as well as the social and political emancipation of the world. The fact that pre-Raphaelism began in England (we refer to the new saints standing on their toe-nails, not the old ones) proves nothing respecting the origination of Art's highest liberty. In the first place, the man