The daily exchange. [volume] (Baltimore, Md.) 1858-1861, 1858-09-27

In the UNITED STATES blessed with
great variety of crops. We have the Wheat crop,
the Corn crop the Tobacco crop, the Sugar crop,
the Cotton crop, the Hemp crop, the Gold crop
and the Hog crop. OF late years we have added
TO these a New England product which, for want
of better term, may be called the Lecture crop,
and we are reminded by sundry notices in the
Boston papers, that the harvesting season for this
peculiar sort Of crop is just now about to COM
mence. Whether the incoming professional Lee
ture crop, may be classed as superior to that Of
previous years, whether it will be found to be
below the usual average both as respects quantity
and quality, remains yet to be determined. We
presume, however, that the supply will be equal to
the demand: that the itinerant Lecturers like the
itinerant players of SHAKsPEAREs time, each with
his pack at his back, will, in due time, announce
their appearance at the customary places set apart
for such entertainments, and that the quality of
their wares will take the common range tfrom fair
to middling." In Boston, the FRATERNITY Lee
tures' advertised to commence on the 9Th of
October. THEODORE PARKER leads the van by de-
livering q course of four lectures on ''Historic
Americans,'' and EMERSON and G. w. CURTIS are
TO follow the irrcverenty reverend THEODORE
We have cited these names for the purpose of show
ing that the most popular lecturers throughout
New England are those that are most distinguished
for the crankineSs Of their opinions. THEODORE
PARKER is a Boston preacher, who is attached to
no sect, and believes in no creed. He is q hard
knotty, unwedgeabe sort of man, who, in the old
Puritan times, would have been an Iconoclast
and jealous declaimer against the unoveliness of
love locks, and the scandal of craven images. He
would have gone forth to do battle against the
malignants, as HUGH PETERS did, with the Bible in
his belt and his long sword swinging by his side:
bnt being born in these latter days he has had to
content himself with heading ANTHONY BURNS
mobs, with taking up collections for the purchase
OF SHARrEs rifles, and with sapping the very oun-
dalton OF that religion whose doctrines he processes
to expound. His disposition is combative.-
lie has power to shatter and to deface, and
he delights most in exercising it; but he
lacks the skill or the inclination to build up
and to heautify. Such is THEODORE PARKER, as
we conceive him TO be- and, in our opinion, he is
scarcely the man from whom accurate portraitures
OF Historic Americans are to be expected
Next in order we come to RALPH WALDO EMERSON
that strange compound of PLATO and JACOB
BEHMEE-of the free-thinker and the transcenden-
talist-but infinitely more of the mystic than of
the philosopher. He has been styled by his adj
mirers ''the Sage of Concord - and if the writing
of quaint but cloudy essays and the delivery of
discourses embodying old truths in new forms
mixedsQp with vague adumbratons of things that
are accepted as profound because they are for the
most part perfectly unntelligible constitute the
essence of wisdom, we admit that he is entitled to
the honor which has been claimed for him of re-
calling his readers and auditors "with thoughts
"beyond TIE reaches of their souls'' The last of
this lecturing trio is GEORGE ". CURTIS, first
known as the author of dreamy book of Syrian
travel, but latterly notorious as rabid free
soiler, filed with venomous hatred to the South;
and as identified with most of the social heresies
that find supporters in the Northern States
Now, from so warped and BIASED as these,
what can be expected but discourses either covert
ly or openly designed to subvert the established
order of things? THEODORE PARKER sneers even
from the pulpit at the popular faith in the truth of
the Christian Doctrines. EMERSON, with his head
in the clouds and his feet in the mre, seeks to be
regarded as teacher of philosophy which is
based upon no system, is subjected 10 no rules and
acknowledges no divine effiuence. CURTIS is s'of
the earth earthly" He is leavened with the leaven
of Brook Farm, and has descended from his nrose-
poetic pedestal to affiliate himself with the pestent
'isms'' with which the soil of New England teens
There are, indeed, many other Lecturers by profess
sion of whom we have not spoken, and of whose
real merits we entertain higher opinion, but on
the whole we are disposed to regard the Lecture
crop--where its properties are not acrd or delete
rious, as in the instances to which we have re-
ferred-as affording solemn sort of amusement,
rather than any positive instruction. Rhetorical