service would educate and train them, as nothing else could, for the very highest work and the very noblest privileges of the Christian ministry in riper years.

In illustration of what we have urged, and by way of experiment, we add the following outline of a working plan, which has received the approval of some of our most intelligent and experienced men. Let us suppose, that the American Unitarian Association or any similar body, holding sufficient funds should offer to enlist for special service, under its own direction, a limited number of young candidates for the ministry.* We would suggest some such conditions as these: That the term of enlistment be for a definite time, say five years; that the immediate compensation in money be a sum strictly limited for personal expenses, say two hundred dollars a year, understanding that lodging and board will be found in the place of service, and that the necessary costs of travel will be defrayed; that an equal sum, say one thousand dollars in all, be paid at the end of five years' acceptable service, or a just proportion of it in case of disability or death; that that any candidate who, by marriage or settlement or engaging in any other vocation, relinquishes the service, loses all further claim upon the Association; while the directing council or committee are held bound in honor to promote, in all fit ways, the professional advancement and welfare of its faithful servants. Such a plan would offer no interference, or even modification, to such professional relations or personal aspirations as now exist; but we are sure that it would open to a class of young men (however small), standing always ready, those to whom the ministry is not a profession merely but a vocation, - an opportunity which

* Among the forms which this special service may take, we may indicate missionary service in prisons or hospitals, or among the poor; the gathering of churches and Sunday schools in cities; education of freedmen and refugees ; the supply of old and dwindling parishes; experimental labors in new communities; together with auxiliary service in large and laborious city parishes. All these are tasks eminently fit to be done under responsible direction; essential to the complete work of the Church as an institution in society; and the very best training for the early years of professional life.

they would embrace with joy, and would be the beginning of a new and nobler future for the profession. The certainty of employment and support in his chosen work is the best privilege a young man can ask; the habit of personal economy, rigidly taught, is one of the first steps to a manly independence in it; a definite, modest capital in hand is one of the best guaranties of that independence; while that immense vitality, that vast fund of moral enthusiasm, in the educated young, always existing, as much as when it flashed itself suddenly into notice all over the land, five years ago, at the nation's call, would be used to noble account, instead of being wasted among mean anxieties, or lost in the weary, broken, unprofitable way.

Moreover, we hold that a council of wise and experienced men, such as our proposition supposes, might do a muchneeded service of guardianship and direction for those to whom the work of the ministry is new and strange. It is needless to point out the many ways in which it might be exercised, to check serious mistakes of inexperience, to prevent fruitless and painful controversies, to adjust the special qualities of the men to the fittest line of service. What wastes of moral force, what sharp personal grievances, might be saved! Any jealousy lest young men should be unfairly dealt with, and kept injuriously in the shade, would of course be met by the fact, that the service proposed is purely voluntary, and is suggested not as a substitute, but as a supplement, to the actual methods of professional employ. Any broader and broadening control over the work of the ministry, as now constituted, it must win by the demonstration of its fitness. We assume, in suggesting it, that the need really exists which is set forth so earnestly in a class of documents we have referred to; and that the need must increase very greatly, in proportion to the large and magnificent scale of action contemplated in our more recent enterprises. If liberal Christianity is ever to do its perfect work, or any respectable share of it, in the great Christian regeneration which our civilization needs, it must be by agencies more extended, more harmonious, more wisely di

VOL. LXXXII. -NEW SERIES, VOL. III. NO. I.

6

rected, controlled by a truer economy, and capable of enlisting a nobler enthusiasm, than any we have established in the past.

And, finally, it appears to us clear, that the first step towards such a consummation must be taken by a body actually existing, commanding public confidence, and having the disposal of revenues sufficient to make a fair experiment. We therefore urge it, with all respect, upon the directors of the Association we have named. To the suspicions that might be whispered as to ecclesiastical rule and spiritual control, we answer, that some confidence may well be yielded, and some discretion entrusted, to men of our own choice, responsible from year to year to the public that commits to them its voluntary gifts; while the experience of all the world, we think, shows the vastly greater enthusiasm and efficiency of any service under responsible, acknowledged leadership. It has often seemed to us the cruellest among the real hardships of this profession, that the young candidate for its services and honors is ushered at once from the seclusion of his preparatory years, from "the quiet and still air of delightful studies," upon the responsible duties and among the complicated social relations of the modern ministry. There are strong, able, and willing men- there are, occasionally, men of genius and power-to whom this prompt assumption of all manly responsibilities is easy, glad, and natural. For such,-men of strong convictions and matured energies, -the ordinary conditions of the Protestant ministry seem to have been specially created. For them, we are glad of all its liberties and all its trusts. But there are other men,- of less natural force perhaps, yet not less valuable in the diversities of administration which the Church requires,—to whom a season of preliminary service, a novitiate (as it were) in the duties and trials of their profession, under the guidance of wise counsellors, seems the one thing needful for the ripening of their powers. Who can tell the number of those, uncomplaining and unknown, who find themselves, at middle life, in a false position, out of which they see no way of escape, simply from the lack

of an opportunity at the start to test their powers, or adapt them to a suitable field? Fine, venerable traditions, touching many of us personally and closely, have made this profession. very dear and honorable to us; and we greatly desire to see the adoption of any course which shall endue it with fresh honors, by giving fresh nobleness and inspiration to its work.

ART. V. — BANCROFT'S HISTORY OF THE UNITED

STATES, VOL. IX.

SIX years ago, we welcomed the eighth volume of Mr. Bancroft's History. It was the first in the history of the Revolution. Since that time, the people of this country have carried through another war, for the complete determination of those eternal principles which led them to their first struggle. They have worked through it with unwavering resolution, worthy to be compared with that in which their independence was born. The second struggle has also resembled the first in its varying fortunes; failure and success alternating in the efforts of the true cause, as they only do in the very noblest of dramas. May we add, perhaps, that this second war of independence has resembled the first in its illustration of the worth and power of a people, whether that people have leaders or have none? Led or not led, even "a headless democracy drifts to victory." As, in the crucibles of history, the reputations of the Revolution are tested, straw and wood gave way long ago, paste and colored glass lasted a little longer, and now all the foils and pinchbecks are beginning to fuse, and there are left, all the more brilliant because the rest are gone, a few real diamonds set in pure gold. Of the time "that tried men's souls," there were many showy reputations, but, after all is over, so few real heroes. The last six years have tried men's souls as the seven years of the Revolution never did. And the verdict of history upon them, after a hundred years, will be of the determined resolution, the se

rene faith, and so of the unhesitating power of a free people. Will there be more than one or perhaps two names of men whom history will remember as of the very first, rising above the general crowd of those who have nobly dared and nobly suffered?

While the nation has, in these immense studies, reviewed all it knew of the histories of its fathers, Mr. Bancroft, forward among the foremost in the cause, speaking and acting his best wherever he seemed most needed, has been, at the same time, steadily working on in the history of the Revolution. We have now his second volume of that history, the ninth volume of the history of the country. Beginning with the morning after the Declaration of Independence, the volume ends, with a certain dramatic fitness, with "that broadest generalization of all" which follows the narrative of the presentation of Franklin to Louis Sixteenth, when France recognized the independence declared two years before. This volume of the old history is all full of the lessons of the new. The American people will read it in a different spirit from that in which they read the volumes before; just as the author has written with new power, and with purposes newly defined, under the light of present illustrations. It is not simply that we know the difference now between a haversack and a howitzer; it is not that we have general officers who had never seen a regiment together seven years ago, who have now had a wider experience than ever Greene had, or Washington. It is no mere matter of the surface which has been illustrated. We have seen the jealousy of competitors whose quarrels for rank seemed to them more important than victory over the enemy; we have seen the passionate favor of a moment of success changed into blame as passionate in a moment of failure; we have seen the cowardice by which barking curs can accuse, before the nation, public officers, whose duty to the nation compel them to make no reply. So we have had living before our eyes the miserable intrigues of the Continental Congress, of the Conway cabal, and of those poor ambitions in which Lee and Gates lost their short-lived reputations for ever. Most remarkable of all, the struggle in which