GOOD IN ALL.

By the Editor.

In a former paper we insisted on a truth, new to most men, that there is Genius in All; that in every one there is a power of excellence in some one or more faculties. It is a truth written on the forehead of Time from our earliest traditions-from Cadmus to Caxton: from Solomon to Shakespere. Yet this truth has been blinked by the world: and because each man was his own witness to the truth, because, excelling in some one thing himself, he, conscious of his own power, denied the universality of the truth, when applied to others. "Impossible," he argued, "that yon sot, or yon plodder, can have the divine gift of Genius: all men cannot be alike Genuises: the very word seems to deny its being the common property of all." Intellect is as various as man: mind as diverse as matter. There are no two leaves alike in the ivy, the most individual of all foliage in its massed form: not a wave gathers or globes like its fellow, yet what more alike in the union or spread of circle and foam.

There is a greater Truth even than this to which the world is blind; a truth, unlike the former, assented to by common belief: but one in which the world has no faith. THERE IS GOOD IN ALL. Yes! we all believe it: not a man in the depth of his vanity but will yield assent. But do you not all, in practice, daily, hourly deny it. A beggar passes you in the street dirty, ragged, importunate. "Ah! he has a bad look" and your pocket is safe. He starves and he steals. "I thought he was bad.” You educate him at the treadmill. He does not improve even in this excellent school. "He is," says the gaoler," thoroughly bad." He continues his course of crime. All that is bad in him, having by this time been made apparent to himself, his friends, and the world, he has only to confirm the decision, and at length we hear when he has reached his last step "Ah! no wonder-there was never any Good in him. Hang him!"

Now much, if not all this, may be checked by a word. If you believe in Good, always appeal to it. Be sure whatever there is of Good-is of God. There is never an utter want of resemblance to the Common Father. "God made man in His own image." "What! yon reeling: blaspheming creature— yon heartless cynic-yon crafty trader-yon false statesman.'

NO. IX.

X

VOL. I.

Yes! All. In every nature there is a germ of eternal Happiness, of undying Good. In the drunkard's heart there is a memory of something better-slight, dim: but flickering still; why should you not by the warmth of your charity give growth to the Good that is in him. The cynic, the miser is not all self. There is a note in that sullen instrument to make all harmony yet; but it wants a patient and gentle master to touch the strings.

You point to the words "There is none good." The truths do not oppose each other. "There is none good-save one." And He breathes in all. In our earthliness, our fleshly will, our moral grasp: we are helpless mean: vile. But there is a lamp ever burning in the heart: a guide to the source of Light-or an instrument of torture. We can make it either. If it burn in an atmosphere of purity, it will warm, guide, cheer us. If in the mist of selfishness, or under the pressure of pride, its flame will be unsteady, and we shall soon have good reason to trim our light, and find new oil for it.

There is Good in All- the impress of the Deity. He who believes not in the Godhead in Humanity, is an Infidel to himself and his race. There is no difficulty about discovering it. You have only to appeal to it. Seek in every one the best features: mark, encourage, educate them. There is no man to whom some circumstance will not be an argument. Byron was a satyr in Venice a demi-god in Greece-his love, the cause of his crimes and the source of his noble sacrifice.

And how glorious in Practice, this Faith! How easy, henceforth all the labors of our Law-Makers, and how delightful, how practical the theories of our Philanthropists. To educate the Good-the good in All: to raise every man in his own opinion, and yet to stifle all arrogance, by shewing that all possess this Good. In themselves, but not of themselves. Had we but Faith in this truth, how soon should we all be digging through the darkness, for this Gold of Love-this universal Good. A Howard, and a Fry, cleansed and humanized our prisons-to find this Good, and in the chambers of all our hearts it is to be found-by laboring eyes and loving hands.

Why all our harsh enactments? Is it from experience of the strength of vice in ourselves that we cage, chain, torture and hang men? Are none of us indebted to friendly hands, careful advisers to the generous trusting: guidance: solace of some gentler being, who has loved us, despite the evil that is in usfor our little Good and has nurtured that Good with smiles and

-

tears and prayers. O we know not how like we are to those we despise! We know not how many memories of kith and kin the murderer carries to the gallows how much honesty of heart the felon drags with him to the hulks.

There is Good in All. Dodd the forger was a better man than most of us: Eugene Aram the homicide would turn his foot from a worm. Do not mistake us. Society demands, requires that these madmen should be rendered harmless. But write not our laws with blood. The law of love is written with blood-but it was His own, not that of His murderers. There is no nature dead to all Good. Lady Macbeth would have slain the old King

Had he not resembled her father as he slept.

It is a frequent thought, but a careless and worthless one, because never acted on, that the same energies, the same will to great vices, had given force to great virtues. Do we provide the opportunity? Do we believe in Good. If we are ourselves deceived in any one, is not all, thenceforth, deceit if treated with contempt, is not the whole world clouded with scorn; if visited with meanness, are not all selfish. And if from one of our frailer fellow-creatures we receive the blow, we cease to believe in Women. Not the breast at which we have drank life: not the sisterly hands that have guided ours: not the one voice that has so often soothed us in our darker hours: will save the sex. All are massed in one common sentence: all bad. There may be Delilahs: there are many Ruths. We should not lightly give them up. Napoleon lost France when he lost Josephine. The one light in Rembrandt's gloomy life was his Sister. Our most brilliant statesman-our sincerest patriot-Canning, is lamented-because, loving all-all loved him. His letters to his low-born mother have a far higher eloquence than his speeches.

And all are to be approached at some point. The proudest bends to some feeling- Coriolanus conquered Rome: but the husband conquered the hero. The money-maker has influences beyond his gold-Reynolds made an exhibition of his carriage; but he was generous to Northcote, and had time to think of the poor Plympton Schoolmistress. The cold are not all ice. Elizabeth slew Essex-the queen triumphed: the woman died.

There is Good in All. Let us shew our Faith in it. When the lazy whine of the mendicant jars on your ears-think of his unaided, unschooled childhood, think that his lean cheeks never knew the baby roundness of content that ours have worn--that

his eye knew no youth of fire-no manhood of expectancy. Pity, help, teach him. When you see the trader, without any pride of vocation, seeking how he can best cheat you, and degrade himself, glance into the room behind his shop and see there his pale wife and his thin children and think how cheerfully he meets that circle in the only hour he has out of the twenty-four. Pity his narrowness of mind his want of reliance upon the God of Good; but remember there have been Greshams, and Heriots, and Whittingtons-and remember too that in merry England there are thousands of Almshouses-our proudest National boast -built by the men of Trade alone. And when you are discontented with the Great, and murmur, repiningly of Marvel in his garret or Milton in his hiding-place, turn in justice to the Good among the Great. the Great. Read how John of Lancaster loved Chaucer and sheltered Wicliff. There have been Burkes as well as Walpoles. Russell remembered Banim's widow and Peel forgot not Haydon.

Ŏnce more believe that in every class there is Good-in every man, Good. That in the highest-and most temptedas well as in the lowest-there is often a higher nobility than of rank. Pericles and Alexander had great, but different virtues, and although the refinement of the one may have resulted in effeminancy and the hardihood of the other in brutality, we ought to pause ere we condemn where we should all have fallen.

:

Look only for the Good. It will make you welcome everywhere-and everywhere it will make you an instrument to good. The Lantern of Diogenes is a poor guide when compared with the Light God hath set in the Heavens-a Light which shines into the solitary cottage and the squalid alley: where the children of many vices are hourly exchanging deeds of kindnessa Light shining into the rooms of dingy warehousemen and thrifty clerks whose hard labor and hoarded coins are for wife and child and friend-shining into prison and workhouse: where sin and sorrow glimmer with sad eyes through rusty bars into distant homes and mourning hearths-shining through heavy curtains and round sumptuous tables: where the heart throbs audibly through velvet mantle and silken vest, and where eye meets eye with affection and sympathy-shining everywhere upon God's creatures-and with its broad beams lighting up a virtue wherever it falls; and telling the proud, the wronged, the merciless, or the despairing, that there is "Good in All."

ON FORTITUDE.

PARENT of those, whose galling chains,
Were by oppression made;

Whose soothing voice, so calm sustains,
When tyranny is swayed;

Oh, come and whisper in mine ears
Thy tales, that best allay my fears;

Exalted pleasures draw from pain.
And when alluring hopes shall fade,
In virtue's cause thy mighty aid
May none invoke in vain.

Oh, come uncurtain thou mine eyes,
When cherished hopes decay.
The stars shine brighter in the skies,
As sinks the orb of day.

Genii of soul ! Nor stern despair,
Nor sorrow holds her vigils here.

Thy power all replete,

When thrall and wrong have reached my head,

Thy car I mount, thy banner spread,

The foe is at my feet.

The captive bound in dungeon keep,
By sternest fate's decree;

And all of human hearts that weep,
On life's perturbed sea;

Oh, let them hear thine hallowed song,

That may not to the earth belong,

Thy sweet consolings from above;

That ever in this worlds career,

The blessed sacrificial tear,

Shall work out heavenly love.

The spirit peacefully resigned,
In sorrow's darkest hour;
Then, then, the majesty of mind,
Thy glory and thy power!
Religion's boon! When thou art near,
The sinking frame in pangs severe,

When to the verge of life is driven;
Then, then, nor language can impart
The triumphs of a throbbing heart,
Rejoicing still in heaven.

H. C.