goes one religion is just as good as another, just as true, just as divine, and just as essential to eternal salvation. In religion every man must be a law unto himself. We cannot deny to the Catholic, to the Mormon, to the Jew, or to the Methodist, the right which we claim for ourselves. We hold priests' vestments, and sacraments, and incense, at small valuation; we will have none of these things for ourselves, but we contend for the absolute and undisturbed right of others to enjoy them, who may religiously believe in them. All that we claim is that one religious sect shall have acceded to it no privileges or immunities which are not accorded to all. And it is necessary to our prosperity as a people, that we should jealously watch over our neighbors lest this golden rule be not strictly observed.

We believe that there are but two sources of danger from which there can be any cause for alarm. The Mormons, at present, are but a handful of people; but those who look carefully at their position, and have watched their wonderful growth, will not be likely to under-estimate the possible danger that lurks in that remote settlement of resolute fanatics by the Great Salt Lake. Just now we have an equally dangerous, but a thousand times more powerful foe twined about us, and every day gaining upon us with such insidious advances, that we scarce perceive either its power or its magnitude. In the last two numbers of the Atlantic Monthly Magazine are two articles, under the head of " Our Roman Catholic Brethren,” which are calculated to awaken very serious thoughts in the minds of many readers. The writer of these articles, who is understood to be James Parton, who has a singular aptitude for morbid subjects, which he has manifested by his biographies of Aaron Burr and of Horace Greeley, and who is understood to be at present engaged on a life of Voltaire, does not look upon the Roman Catholics with any apparent disfavor. He merely treats from the picturesque and emotional point of view, and holds up for our admiration, the peculiar methods by which they contrive to first gain a firm footing in a community, and then to spread themselves.

The Roman Catholics, we must admit, are wise in their generation, and, if we acknowledge that the supremacy of their church is the greatest good to be achieved upon earth, as all Catholics profess to believe, why, then, they are entitled to our highest admiration. They sacrifice everything for that end, and as they know that nothing is so conducive to the security and power of the church and its priests, as the ignorance and degradation of the people, they are always and everywhere the implacable foes of education. In every age they find a Galileo to persecute; and wherever they send a priest they have a grand inquisitor. Wherever they are, they are the enemies of freedom, of progress, of culture, of civilization. In this country they have always been the upholders of slavery; they constitute the "right bower" of the Democratic party; they were on the side of the rebels during the war, and they are the friends of all the apostate Johnsons. The rioters who burned Orphan Asylums during the war were only a mob of Irish Roman Catholics.

Visit any of our prisons, in which you will see the name of the occupant of a cell, and his birth-place on the door, and you will find, in nine cases out of ten, it is the name of an Irish Roman Catholic. Read the closing scenes in the lives of the malefactors who pay the penalty of their crimes on the gallows, and you will find they were mostly attended by Roman Catholic Priests. Spaniards ascend to Heaven!" was the salute addressed to some pirates in Britain by a Catholic priest, as the executioner led them to the scaffold.

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Mr. Parton praises the sagacity which the Catholics have exhibited in New York in getting possession of valuable pieces of real estate, whereby their Church has been greatly enriched. Undoubtedly it was sagacious, but he did not tell what he ought to have known, that in many instances these desirable pieces of real estate were obtained by corrupt means from a corrupt Common Council, which was composed chiefly of Catholics. In New York, which Mr. Parton himself has shown in the North American Review, is one of the most thoroughly corrupt and rascally municipal governments in the world, the Roman Catholics have entire control. No man can be elected to any municipal office, or hold any governmental employment whatever, who is not either an Irish Roman Catholic or a suppie tool of the Catholics. They make inordinate demands on all other sects for help in their distresses, but they will never, under any circumstances, afford any aid to others. They are proselytizing, persecuting and intolerant; and if they could have their way as a sect, no step would ever be taken by the human race out of the darkness and despair of ignorance and superstition. There seems but little probability of the Catholics ever becoming the ruling sect in the United States; but their increase is very rapid, and the liberty they enjoy here, and the political power which they already wield, renders it necessary that every check shall be placed upon them that is consistent with republican freedom. We cannot pass laws which shall discriminate against them, but what we can do is to refrain from giving any aid or encouragement to the propogation of their religious dogmas, and by careful teaching strive to neutralize the subtle influence which they exert over the minds of the great multitude who are always ready to yield to audacious self-assertion whether in religion or politics. Papacy means despotism and slavery; it means imperialism and the subjugation of the intellect; it means antagonism to any form of freedom. We have never yet had but one papist in a high national office, and that one, the always infamous Taney, when Chief-Justice of the Supreme Court, declared that the black man had no rights which white men were bound to respect. Suppose a papist in the Presidential chair! What infinite damage to the cause of human freedom might and most certainly would be the consequence.

MOZART.

A Biographical Romance, from the German of HERIBERT RAU; by E. R. SILL. New York: Leypoldi & Holt. 1868.

THERE

HERE is a prejudice against biographies in the minds of many people, who have been wearied by the dull commonplaces that make up a large part of every life, and are interesting only to those immediately concerned in them. When therefore the full meaning of a life, with many of its historic incidents, is presented in the form of a romance, it reaches the heart much sooner than any mere biography can. The author's aim in this romance is to bring closer to the heart of the German people one of its noblest sons." We think he has succeeded in doing this, not only for the Germans, but for all who have the good fortuue to read the book. First, the child comes close to us, in the freshness of his wonderful young life, the musical development of which seems to be a continuation of his father's appreciation of music, one of the many instances of the hereditary transmission of such glorious birthright, a miracle that can never grow less wondrous by repetition. Mature as the boy of six or eight years was in his appreciation of music, he was childlike and natural in all else, and often astonished and almost shocked the great people into whose company his musical attainments introduced him, by the innocent freedom of his remarks to Emperors and Kings. On one occasion at the court of Maria Theresa, he said as he looked at the group of courtiers with his great wise eyes-" None of these people seem to me to know anything of music!"

Why so?" asked Maria Theresa.

"I see it in their looks; they are a great deal too stiff!"

The Empress could not but laugh, and the company followed her example, but not at all heartily.

When the arch-duke asked the boy "whom he considered the greatest musician of past time," he replied, "The trumpeter who blew down the walls of Jericho."

His is the old, old story of unappreciated genius, struggling always against poverty and disappointment, the positions and emoluments which would have added years to his life, being delayed until the hour of his death, and coming only in time for him to say, "it is too late."

Yet with all its scrrows and disppointments and sins, how beautiful a life was his! He whose soul is steeped in music has an existence unintelligible save only to the initiated. Though the outer life be troubled and dark, there is deep in such a heart a summer-land, whose warmth and fragrance are eternal. Mozart began to live this double life while he was yet a child, and the marvellous performances of his early days-from the time when he wrote out from memory, in his fourteenth year, the Misere of Allegri after one hearing, were but the prelude to greater wonders iu his later years.

His biographer says of him, "His musical being seemed to have lived a previous existence, and to find all earthly things only reminiscences of that former life. To such an extent, at least, the poet's words seem to be verified in Mozart

"Our birth is but a sleep, and a forgetting;

The soul that rises with us, our life's star,
Hath had elsewhere its setting.

And cometh from afar.

Not in entire forgetfulness,
And not in utter nakedness,

But trailing clouds of glory, do we come
From God, who is our home.'

One is almost awe-struck by the grandeur of the definition of the meaning of music which is here ascribed to Mozart; "Music is the melody to which the world is but words." Whether this sentiment be really Mozart's, we know not, but it accords with the nature of the man, and if it be his biographer's, he is blessed in having such an interpreter.

To Herr Rau also belongs the following expression of an idea, which may not be altogether new, yet is presented in such happy form as to attract attention: "To young genius the finite is infinite. The eye takes in the distance, the height, the depth, but not the boundaries and limitations. The blue sky and the blue ocean seem alike fathomless; the momentary woe appears an eternity, and joy and beauty are immortal.”

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One or two stories in connection with the first performance of Don Giovanni are good illustrations of some of Mozart's peculiar traits. In the rehearsal, the prima donna who was to take the part of Zerlina, did not utter her cry for help, when Don Juan leads her out of the banquet room, in a manner to please Mozart. He made her repeat it several times and it was still no nearer right. At last stepping from his platform on to the stage, as if out of patience, he placed himself behind the pretty little woman, and over her shoulder, gave the signal to begin once more. When the moment came for Zerlina to utter her cry for help, he suddenly embraced her with such force and boldness that she gave a terrified shriek with the utmost naturalness." Madame Bondini was for a moment inclined to be offended with him, but his good nature and sincerity restored her confidence.

Several red and black devils with horns and tail had been provided to carry off Don Juan; but this part of the performance did not please Mozart. "He is man enough," said the musician, "to go to the Devil when he is called." After the rehearsal, as Mozart turned to go away, "he nearly ran over a small man in red and black tights. It was one of the devils who had removed his mask, and stood looking at the maestro with a mournful visage. Well,' said Mozart, you don't mean to seize me, do you, in revenge for not getting hold of Don Juan?' N-n-no!' stammered the devil; certainly not,but can't we play then at all in the opera ?' 'Oh; it's your wages, is it?' and he felt after his purse. No!' he exclaimed; "the devil take the few pennies; I mean we don't care about them, poor as we are; but we can't

hear the music any more!' 'Yes,' broke in Crispin, emerging from the shadow of the side-scenes and removing his horns and tail as he came. 'Herr von Mozart, you will pardon my speaking to you, but,' and the tears stood in the poor fellow's eyes, I shall be remembering that music when I die!' Then Mozart's eyes grew suddenly moist also. It was the sweetest praise which he had heard to-day. Shaking both their hands cordially, he said: At every performance of Don Giovanni while I am in Prague, you shall have free admittance. Only come to my house always the day before.' And the devils departed rejoicing."

are.

Of one who, pretending friendship, had greatly injured him he said; “If you love me say no more about the matter. Schikaneder is a man as we all The bad is not in him, but on him; it is the foul garment of an originally pure soul. The poor devils of humans are mostly good, if one only looks at them right. All these discords and jangles in them resolve at last into eternal divine harmony."

"Mozart," says his biographer, was a Catholic; but he often said, the church were a waste of time.

"was a religious man, Outwardly he that for him the rites and ceremonies of He was in the largest sense a Christian.

The life of the man Jesus was in his estimation the noblest human life the world has known, and only those who have traced the composer's steps in the minutest details of his existence can appreciate with what child-like simpleheartedness and self-sacrifice he followed that ideal. If he failed of perfection, which of us shall cast the first stone?"

Mozart was a great worker, he worked unreasonably; at first in the divine enthusiasm of youth which knows no limitations to its possibilities of performance, and afterward still more unreasonably, pushed on by poverty and care and responsibility, which were relentless in their demand. His health began early to give way under such pressure, for he wrote late in the night, heedless of hunger and fatigue, almost unconscious of bodily existence while filled with this higher life.

He began to find relaxation necessary, and his warm social nature prompted him to seek it in the society of congenial companions, where mirth was often boisterous, and sociability became carousing. Then when the night was far spent he would go home to his anxious wife, and in spite of her entreaties that he should rest, would work till dawn. Notwithstanding his vagaries and short-comings his heart was always innocent and child-like. He respected innocence and goodnesss, and the unscrupulous indulgences of his one-time friend Schikaneder filled him with indignation.

This book, although open to some of the same criticisms, is not so sensational and morbid as Miss Muhlbach's novels, which have almost disgusted sensible people by their high-colored and over-drawn pictures. It is certain, we think, with most thoughtful people, to be the introduction to a more careful study of Mozart's life, carrying with it an assurance that such a life must be a very gospel to those who read it aright.