THE LIFE AND TIMES OF SAMUEL BOWLES.*

Tins is an extremely well written life of a man whose life was well worth writing. And it is more than that. For, rightly judging that the appropriate background of a portrait of a great journalist should be " a sketch of the public events which wrought on him, and on which he wrought," Mr. Merriam has sketched, with a firm and vigorous hand, the stirring

incidents which marked the history of the United States of America, from the annexation of Texas to the close of recon- struction under President Hayes. While those incidents were enacting, Mr. Bowles was conducting, with rare energy and

ability, the Republican, a daily paper published in the provincial

town of Springfield, a paper limited to a comparatively small circulation, but which exercised a wide influence. So wide, indeed, was that influence, that the editor became in time " an important factor in public affairs." Our readers, however,

would scarcely thank us for a summary of the steps by which the Republican and its editor both deserved and commanded success. Our object in calling attention to

this book has little to do with the personal history of Mr. Bowles, or with the views which he advocated, or with the theory and ideal of journalism which lie exemplified. All these details are handled. by his biographer very skilfully ; and as

English readers know by bitter experience, that when they have set before theth what professes to be the "life and times " of this or that celebrity, from Daniel Defoe down to Prince Bis- marck, the " times " are usually mere pudding. We think it right to say most emphatically that the " times " portion of Mr. Merriam's book is capitally done. He has the instinct of a born historian, as well as that of a horn biographer. But with the great public events in which Mr. Bowles was a spectator and actor we have still less to do, so far as following them is concerned, than with the details above mentioned. Our object, in short, is not to relimn in miniature the vivid full-length portrait which Mr. Merriam has drawn of Mr. Bowles, or to write a pri,cis of

that portion of a great nation's story which he has told so well. Our object is to show the reader, if we can within our limits, that this book is worth reading and worth buying, and, if we may use such an expression, that it is an average-raising addition to the sum of good American literature. Or, to speak with more pre- cision, and less ambitiously, we shall attempt to show that the idiosyncrasy of Mr. Bowles was one of no ordinary interest; that in Mr. Merriam that idiosyncrasy has found a most sym- pathetic expositor; and finally, for we lay some stress upon that point, that Mr. Merriam is quite as good a historian as lie is a biographer. Now, this, we think, we can only do, or at all events can best do, by quotations. Premising, therefore, that, as we can hardly dwell on more than one aspect of what we have somewhat pedantically called the interesting idiosyncrasy of Mr. Bowles,—premising also that we entirely assent to Mr. Merriam's assertion that this great journalist was " a man of strong, racy,

many-sided individuality," we shall leave the following quota- tions to speak for themselves. It is a case of ed: pede Herculent ;

and we have no room for comments, if we had any to make worth the listening to :-

" Bless you, my dear friend," lie writes to Miss Whitney, " for opening to me so freely your religious life and faith. Had I not been gradually recognising it for the last two or three months, I should have been astonished to find it so great a thing to you. And I am surprised and impressed that yours was that common experience of revelation and rest by a sudden flash, as it were. There must be, I suppose, preparation and thought ; but the finishing stroke seems God-given, and fosters itself in a way that must be wondrously im- pressive. As to my own opinions, it would be pretty difficult to -describe them. Perhaps yon have done it as nearly as it can be done,—yet I do not wholly recognise it as my condition. All these things have seemed a muddle to me,—my mind never could solve them. I can generally average and condense the intelligent views and opinions of others on most subjects; but here the wide divergence of great and good men, the contradictions of revelation and science, the variant testimony of all our sources of information, have been too much for the grasp and condensation of my mind. So I have just put it aside,—and waited. I have striven to keep my heart and my head free, and unprejudiced, open to all good influences—ready to receive the gift, but perhaps not reaching out for it—and not reach- ing out perhaps, again, because when I made the effort I felt a sickening feeling of hypocrisy, mixed with the apprehension that to • The Life and Times of Samuel Bowleg. By George A Merriam. London : T. Fisher Unwin. New York The Century Company. 1885. go ahead was for me to back. And that the faith of my fathers and the testimony of geed men forbade me to do. So I have seemed forced to be content to grow in goodness in my more prac- tical way, and to leave theories and faith to time. I try to make my life show the result of Christianity and godliness, if I have not the thing in its theoretical form. Patience, charity, faith in man, faith in progress, have been lessons that I have been learning these many years. Purity of life, too, has been a constant aim. Measured by my fellows, I have been successful,—moresuccessfal than many who have firmer foundations, or affect to have. But this consciousness is injurious to me. It is leading me to be content. It is, perhaps, reconciling me to a little sin. And, indeed, I do not expect ever to be perfectly good, or to find any other person so. I do net see how that is possible with any nature. That ha, I mean by goodness, parity of son1,—perfect purity in thought as well as action:I

We can quote no more of this remarkable letter,—remarkable in itself, and still more remarkable as coming from a man so zealous in business as Mr. Bowles always was. Zeal, in fact, for his business, zeal, burning zeal for his newspaper, which was verily to him " bone of his bone, and flesh of his flesh," ate him up. He died worn out before his time, and his last days are described with quiet pathos by Mr. Merriam, and by a lady who nursed him during some of them. He was most unwilling to depart, and the contrast which she draws between his death- bed and that of a poor Catholic railroad engineer, whom she was visiting while taking care of Mr. Bowles, is touching to the last degree. She gained, she said, at the bedside of the one the strength which she needed for that of the other. A very fine chapter, called "Lights and Shadows," is the fittest commentary that we can imagine on this pathetic exit of one who worked wisely, indeed, but too well. We quote the concluding sentences ; but to understand them thoroughly, the chapters on "The Ethics of News-giving" and "The Higher Journalism" should be carefully read. " Truth-speaking," as Mr. Merriam in- geniously and truly remarks, " truth-speaking as an obligation paramount to partisanship, friendship, and all personal ends, is not an ingenious invention, which once discovered is speedily adopted by every one." But with Mr. Bowles, "the sum and substance of independent journalism—and he recognised no other journalism as of the highest class—was to speak the truth without fear or favour." Here, however, are Mr. Merriam's comments on the one thing that was lacking to this able, energetic, and interesting journalist :—

" There were in this man certain central desires and purposes which he never willingly yielded. He must succeed, he must be strong, he must dominate in his own field. To command success, to win full expression and achievement for all the powers within him, to conquer dikase, to hold Death himself at bay, to keep at all hazards his masterful grip on the world,—this was his ceaseless effort. He refused to obey the most imperative warnings of nature that he must absolutely desist from work-. When an irresistible hand VMS laid on his vital powers, when a voice said, Thee far shalt thou go, and no farther,' when he felt that he never should attain his ideals of work and expression, when at last the inexorable end approached, he could not accept it or be reconciled. He was too proud and strong for weak complaint, bat it all touched him with a bitterness of despair." " He felt," says Mr. Merriam, elsewhere, " the want of assured religious faith which is in the air of this transition time. The poor Catholic who lay dying near him had something which he lacked. But for him, as for many men of our age, the want of spiritual faith was not chiefly due to intellectual perplexities,—it was due rather to the walls which his norestieg activity built up, shutting up the soul from free communion with the Eternal. Thou bast formed us for Thyself, and our heart is unquiet till it rest in Thee' That rest cannot be fully felt except as the soul learns passivity and Self-surrender."

It will be readily understood from these quotations that there is a vein of the "moral thoughtfulness" which Dr. Arnold admired so much running through these volumes. It would be a mistake, however, to suppose that this vein is obtrusively pre- dominant. Mr. Bowles fought merrily, as well as firmly, against waning health, and when the pressure of pain left him, he was the gayest of the gay. One of the Republican's staff, who was detailed for a while as his amanuensis, tells the following story :— "'I made a point of never letting my face show what I thought about what I was writing ; but once I failed. A religious weekly had been nagging the Republican very meanly ; he took no notice till the time came, and then he gave them an article. It wound np with a story so fanny that I couldn't keep my face straight. I glanced round, hoping he didn't see me,—be was in a favourite attitude, leg over chair, elbow on knee, band over face, and was watching me through his fingers to see how I took it. Then I exploded, and so did he,—he laughed till the tears ran down his face."

We know what inference Carlyle would have drawn from such a laugh, and cannot help quoting a few more sentences from this amanuensis :—

n In working hours he very rarely spoke to me of anything bat the work. I saw him a number of times in his family, where he was a totally different man. He asked me there repeatedly, at Thanks- giving or Christmesf—I suppose because I was a Stranger and a poor little wretch. At such times he was as jolly as a man could be, a perfect boy. Next morning at work again, so!emn as a judge ! I always felt obliged to do my best for him ; his eye saw everything. I almost worshipped him. There was more religion in my feeling towards him than in almost anything else in me."

This tribute from a "poor little wretch" strikes us as irre- sistible, and reminds us, to compare small things with great, of the tribute paid to Caesar by his humble friend Matins, and to Cromwell by his humble friend Maidstone. Mr. Bowles was not, in any sense, what the world has agreed to call a "great man," neither was he a man of deep or wide culture. Bat he was, taking him for all in all, what we heard a schoolboy once call Hannibal, a " splendid fellow." It is not likely that this excellent biography will be neglected in England; and we shall be surprised and grieved indeed, if it does not meet with great success in America. We had intended to quote some passages to shoiv that Mr. Merriam is as good a historian as he is biographer ; but we have reached the end of our tether, and can only reiterate our entire approval of this extremely interesting account of the life and times of an extremely interesting man.'