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

In the UNITED STATES we are blessed with a
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 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 10 COM
mence. Whether the incoming professional Lee
ture crop, may be classed as superior to that OF
previous years or whether it will be found to be
below the usual average, both 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 SHAKsPEARE's 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 will take the common range ''from fair
to middling." In Boston, the FRATERNITY Lee
tures'' are advertised to commence on the 9Th of
October THEODORE PARKER leads the van by de-
liverng a course of four lectures on ''Historc
Americans and EMERSON and G. W. CURTIS are
TO follow the irreyerently 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 hard
knotty, unwedgeabe sort of man, who, in the old
Puritan times, would have been an Iconoclast
and jealous decaimer against the unloveliness of
love locks, and the scandal of craven images. He
would have gone forth to do battle against the
maignants, as IIUGH PETERS did, with the Bible in
his belt and his long sword swinging by his side;
but being born in these latter days, he has had to
content himself with beading ANTHONY BURNS
mobs, with taking up collections for the purchase
of SHARpE's rifles and with sapping the very foun-
daon 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 beautify. 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-
taiist-hut infinitely more of the mystic than of
'i'e philosopher He has been styled by his ad-
h''ieIS ''the sage Of Concord" and if the writing
OIL quaint nut cloudy essays, and the delivery of
oiScourses emhodying old truths in new forms.
hhiAeClegp Win vague adumbrations of tbnos that
are accepted as profound because tbev aro for +bo
most part perfectly unntelligible constitute tho
essence of wisdom, We admit that he is entitled -
The honor which has been claimed for him IF ro-
gazing his readers and auditors "with tbmobtS
beyond the reaches of their souls.' The last of
this lecturing trio is GEORGE W. CURr1s fret
known as the author of dreamy book of Svrion
""'e' put more latterly notorious as a rabd free
soner' hiied with venomous hatred TO the Sontb .
- -oen 'iieo with most of the social heresies
,.i"' ilDu supporters in the Northern States
-'o'-' ineh SO warped and BIASED as these
Lou 0'n NC expected but discourses either covert
y VI openly designed to subyert the established
order OF things? THEODORE p.prrn sr,oo,. -
IRON tne pulpit at the popular faith in Tho e
tne ohristian Doctrines EMERsox VIII Iii,
III tne clouds and his feet in the n;ro 800
regarded as a teacher of a nb;losonb-.,. ~ NC
based upon no system, is subjected 81 "n''h Is
acknowledges no divine effiuenco -uies ana
the earth earthly" He is leavened with e.. Is OF
of Brook Farm, and has descended from his ,easen
poetic pedestal to affiliate himself with the nes,;,e
'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
=
rious, as in the instances to which we have re-
ferred-as affording solemn sort of amusement
rather than any positive instruction. Rhetorical