BASTIAT, FRÉDÉRIC, a celebrated French political economist, was born at Bayonne, June 29, 1801; and died at Rome, December 24, 1850. In 1848 he was a member of the Constituent and Legislative Assemblies. He was an early and influential advocate of free trade, and an uncompromising opponent of socialism. His principal work is Harmonies Economiques, published in 1849, in which he makes very free use of the writings of Henry C. Carey. He wrote several other works on political economy. Professor Cossa, writing against some of the theories of Bastiat, says of him, however, that "he was a sincere. philanthropist, an eminent dialectician, and a formidable champion of economic freedom;" and John Elliott Cairnes, the noted political economist, says: "What Bastiat did was this: having been at infinite pains to exclude gratuitous gifts of nature from the possible elements of value, and having pointedly identified the phenomenon with 'human effort' as its exclusive source, he designates human effort by the term 'service,' and then employs this term to admit as sources of value those very gratuitous natural gifts the exclusion of which in this capacity constituted the essence of his doctrine." SCIENCE AND IGNORANCE. The sciences may be divided into two classes. One of these classes may be known only to savans. It includes those sciences the application of which constitutes the business of special professions. The vulgar reap the fruit, in spite of their ignorance. A man may find use for a watch, though ignorant of mechanics and astronomy, and he may be carried along by a locomotive or a steamer, trusting to the skill of the engineer or the pilot. We walk according to the laws of equilibrium, although unacquainted with these laws, just as M. Jourdain had talked prose all his life without knowing it. But there are sciences which exercise on the public mind an influence which is only in proportion to public enlightenment, and derive all their efficacy not from knowledge accumulated in some gifted minds, but from knowledge diffused over the general masses. Among these we may include morals, medicine, social economy, and in countries where men are their own masters, Politics. It is to such sciences that the saying of Bentham specially applies, "To disseminate them is better than to advance them." What signifies it, that some great man, or even that God himself, should have promulgated the laws of morality, as long as men, imbued with false notions, mistake virtues for vices, and vices for virtues ? What matters it that Smith, Say, and, according to M. de Saint-Chamans, economists of all schools, have proclaimed, in reference to commercial transactions, the superiority of liberty over constraint, if the men who make our laws, and for whom our laws are made, think differently?-Economic Sophisms; translated by P. J. BATES, ARLO, an American journalist, poet, and story-writer, was born, December 16, 1850, at East Machias, Me., where, after preparing for college, he spent some years in teaching before he entered Bowdoin. Soon after his graduation, in 1876, he engaged in literary work in Boston, and in 1880 became editor of The Boston Sunday Courier. His first book, Patty's Perversities, was published in 1881. His remaining prose works are: Mr. Jacobs (1883); The Pagans (1884); The Wheel of Fire (1885); A Lad's Love (1887); The Philistines (1888); Albrecht (1890); The Book o' Nine Tales (1891), and In the Bundle of Time (1893). His volumes of poems are: Berries of the Brier (1886); Sonnets in Shadow (1887); The Poet and His Self (1891); Told in the Gate, seven oriental tales in blank verse (1892), and The Torch-Bearers (1894). In 1882 he married Miss Harriet L. Vose (" Eleanor Putnam"), the author of several charming sketches, published collectively by him after her death in 1886, under the title Old Salem. He has since published another volume by her, A Woodland Wooing (1889), and a boys' story, Prince Vance (1888), their joint production. In 1893 Mr. Bates was elected Professor of English Literature in the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, but resigned the position a few months after. HARUN. Abu, the sage, master among the wise, Said to his pupil, Harun : "To their end Flow all my years. When death shall close my eyes, To thee my mantle and my rule descend. "In token of thy mission shall be thine Three wishes. See that thou art wise in choice, That thou the very heart of truth divine, 66 Since thou must teach when dust hath choked my voice." Master," quoth Harun, "be first boon to stand In thought upon the farthest star man's sight May eager reach when, on the desert's sand, His vision yearns through the abyss of night." The master bowed assent. Straightway a trance Wrapped Harun's sense, passed him and left him free. "What sawest thou?" asked Abu. "The advance Of mote-thick stars down the immensity." The master smiled. "Thy second boon," he said. "In thought to stand upon that star the last My vision conquered." Abu bent his head; This, too, was granted, and the vision passed. "What sawest thou?" "As thick as dust when high By the simoon the desert sands are swirled, The stars hang in the void, far as the eye Could pierce the gloom, each one a perfect world.” "Thy third wish?" Abu said. "Once more to look From that last star which trembled far and dim, Upon my vision's utmost verge." Scarce shook The master's beard of snow, ere unto him This too had come-and passed. With eyes as quick "What sawest thou?" "Stars thick As thoughts of mortals which no number know "Reach on down the illimitable dread." "Now of the boon that thou hast reached the span, What hast thou gained?" "The secret," Harun said; "The heart of truth,-the nothingness of man!" -The Poet and His Self. IN THE GATE. In the arched gateway of fair Ispahan, White as spun-glass, his hoary beard flows down Like cave-set pools in gleaming blackness shine; From out the living rock. Around him sit All listening tireless to the tales he tells. As thus they sit at ease, lapped in delights, The doleful camels, burdened, pass, the train Through the long afternoons like fountain-fall |