Year: 1859

The Eighth Lecture of the course before the
Mercantile Library Association was delivered last
evening by the Rev. f. II. Chaplin, the subject of
his discourse being tOrders of Nobility" He be-
gan by saying that he should not speak of the con-
ventional orders of nobility, as he conceived them
to be of an insignificant order, the substance of
which had long been underground. The founder
of a noble family could not perpetuae his nobility
Tine death OF a great man produced universal
shock while the death of King was hardly felt
and rarely cared for. True nobility of action in
man consisted in doing his work WE'LL and in this
way he belonged to the primitive strata of worth
1t was more honorable to be a boot-black than q
lazy gentleman; a street-sweeper than a lump of
elegant depravity in broadcloth and fine linen.
There were one or two specific evils connected with
the common mistaken notion to manual labor.
The first of these was the overcrowding of the pro-
fessons, despite the fact that the man of thought
won his daily bread by labor when far into the
night the mill lay idle and the loom was STILL The
hardest work in this world was not the work that
made the most noise. People educated their child
ren to look above mechanical toll, and thus unpro-
ductive spheres of labor overcrowded; and in
this Identification of ideness with gentility we
might trace the seeds OF prolific crop of social
embarrasSments. 0 standard of democracy, how
ever stringent was potent enough to weld together
refinement and vulgarity. Kindred drops would
congomerate, and, by the same law would repel
their opposites, but let recognize the identical
point of cleavage, and identify the strata through
which each runs. Here, in America, we were
placed just between these alternatives: We might
make wretched attempt to prop up factitious
forms of aristocracy, or we might gloriously vind
cate the honorable sense of America. Here we had
the best possible opportunity to recognize that
ability which had no standard ofaristocracy but
mental worth. To do work worthily, we must
think worthiy of it. All manual labor would be
degraded so long as it had merely mechanical
value. Men rightly valued the original offspring
of genius and OF thought above all the original off
springs of manual dexterity Now, in what did
this nobleness of thought consist? One ACQUIRED
the sense of intellectual nobeness Just in propor-
hon as he assmilates and reproduces truth The
truth IS the ground of all noble thought Noble
thought Is right thought, pure thought generous
thought. The vulgar is the man of vulgar
thinking, whatever may be the amplitude and
splendor of his surroundings He always draws
things into the alternating conduits of his own
soul, and walks on the shilling side of existence
ct the simple men-nOt the mean men-whom we
often found about us, frequently took hold OF every
mental truth by instinct. Such men, true in their
thought, belonged to the highest nobility True
nobility consisted in every mans fidelity to the
truth he knows. He who has the largest amount
of truth is at an infinite distance from its limits; he
who is at its least, is no father. Therefore we
could not make distinctions of nobility to denend
upon the amount of truth of which any man was
possessed, but upon the tenacity with which each
held to the truth he had Let all men, therefore
nourish the little truth thev had As there was NO
noble work without noble thought. and as no
thought was wholly noble that did not reveal itself


in actions, it evident that either of these condi
tlons involved nobility of life, which union
OF thought and OF action. In conclusion the lee
turer claimed three specific elements ofnObeness of
lite, unconclousness, communication and aspiration.
As to the first, the greatest and best things that
done were done, he said, not by calculation, but in
the sweep of inspiration; as to the second, the
largeness of ones being in proportion to the
largeness of his sympathies and the more points he
touched in the world the he understood; as to
the third he would finally observe that truly no.
Bile life was everywhere and always a life inspira-
ton, everywhere rising to higher points of conceiv-
able Importance, Stimulating that importance
ourselves, not content to see, continually striving
to be; al human ambitions were but its grosser
types and witnesses


There was large fire at No. 81 South st., New
York, on Monday night and damage was done to the
amount of $4,000. Several kegs of gunpowder
was burst open, and several fremen and patrolmea
were badly injured.