and Rutledge, the North and South, were equally active in exciting and equally zealous in prosecuting that struggle which secured us our liberties, and now we see a Webster and a Calhoun, able and honest, in the more civil capacity of preserving the Constitution which is their continual guaranty. These historic standpoints are seldom undermined. The present is ever jealously reverent of the past. The only real danger which we can detect in the further extension of our territory, arises from the fact that it invites immigration, and may also incorporate with our union opinions which are foreign, and people who have not a common antiquity with our confederation. We see a surety of continued harmony in the difference of habit and temperament between our Northern and Southern population. The one is a supplement to the other. There is moreover a conservative feature in our government, which resists all danger from individual discontent. The civil wars of England and the French Revolution, would not have resulted as they did, but for the master-influence of individual actors. Here the individual is not exhalted above the mass. A man is only great by means of his constituency in the whole. The vis inertiae of the mass is fatal to single minds, ambitious for extraordinary ends. No single mind, no association of minds adhering to singular opinions, can obtain permanent sway. A sort of popular egotism is startled which resists the innovation. Thus our country stands in no hazard from those sudden convulsions which have torn other countries, when a crazed and riotous populace have seconded the ambition of some master-rebel. Resistance to the government is fatal to the governed. We have now given a hasty but honest glance at the political condition of our country, and there remains another standard by which to measure it-that of mind. This is above all others the true gauge of national greatness. Broad lands and boundless treasures are elements of a nation's greatness, only so far as they favor the development of its mind; for the end of every human compact is to adapt mankind for the fruition of that perfect government whose author is God. Great hopes have been entertained that America would be the seat of new and wonderful developements in mind. Its scenery of mingled grandeur and beauty; its wild contrasts of mountain and of wold; its awful cataracts and broad lakes ;-all storied in the Mythology of a romantic though barbarous people--were expected to arouse strange energies in thought. Such expectations have not been realized to a full degree, and our own vanity suggests that we are in the youth of great things, while foreign rivalry proclaims that American genius has already reached its highest flight. A careful study of our history and character we think will show that neither are correct. We have before remarked that our country was founded by men of established character and opinion. Such are indeed the men who lay broad and deep the foundations of empire, but they are not of those who endow a nation's history with that various and stormy action which prompts the highest efforts of mind. Our history is a record of privations and manful struggles against an inclement fortune, rather than of venturous exploits. None but sterling characteristics were displayed, and the eye of Genius saw but few phases of the human heart. When trammeled by the stubborn systems of a regular life, Genius dares not to picture its strangest visions and loses its "lust of power." Humanity only in its wild and riotous excesses stirs it to bold and eccentric effort. Thus the greatest Poets, Orators, Painters and Sculptors have arisen in the infancy of their arts. Homer, Chaucer, Spenser, Shakspeare and Dante-Raphael, Titian, Michael Angelo-the Greek Sculptors and Tragedians-all lived in the beginning of their arts, and carried them almost to their highest perfection. The age has passed away, therefore, when we might have looked for those "Titans of the soul" who scale its highest heaven. There is yet a special excellence for which American mind may aim with a certainty of success. It is that of becoming a coworker with our republican government, of informing public opinion, which is at once the motive and governing power of our institutions. "Invent writing, Democracy is inevitable. Writing brings Printing-universal, every day, extempore Printing-as we see at present. Whoever can speak, speaking now to the whole nation, becomes a power, a branch of government, with inalienable weight in law-making, in all acts of authority. It matters not what rank he has, what revenues or garnitures; the requisite thing is that he have a tongue which others will listen to; this and nothing more is requisite. The nation is governed by all that has tongue in the nation. Democracy is virtually there."* literature which will have a tongue wherewith to reach the nations heart, and convert it from a worship of the simulacra to a true and lively reverence for the reality of Democracy, is what we have cause to expect. Our physical resources and our literature will then be the twin and inseparable pillars of a great and permanent Republic. We shall then have no need of song or story to commemorate our name; it will live with the life of nations, either as a distinct existence or as a mighty leaven to raise and purify the human race. A Let us consider, for a moment, the tendencies to such a consummation. The peculiarities of its government must stamp themselves, in a degree, upon a nations mind. Law embodies its rules of action, Literature its rules of thought, and each is representative of a phase of its public opinion. Our political institutions must, therefore, have a connection with our literature, and a proportionate influence upon it. What is this influence? It nurses freedom of thought. But the mind cannot be enslaved; it will make itself wings "wherewith to overfly the narrow circus of its dungeon walls." This is not true. Look at the slave, the timid crouching slave; why does he not break his bonds? Is it because they are too strong •Carlyle. for him; or has the long habit of bodily slavery made his mind servile? The same influence, although in a qualified degree, acts upon those who live under monarchical forms of government. Does the Russian serf (although he be as is sometimes the case, a millionaire) think for himself? No. His soul is dragged down to share the slavery of his body. We may still farther illustrate the blessings which free institutions confer upon mind, by contrasting their influence with that of the less liberal government of England. This is best shown by the rarity of instances we find in England, of men rising from very low estate to royalty in mind. England can boast, it is true, some such deathless names. Keats from his Gallipots, and still later Prince, from the very Alms house, both have found a tongue with which to utter the language of a strange and mysterious poesy. Other, and perhaps brighter exceptions might be cited; but here it would seem as if genius had gone mostly to the way-places and hedges, and forced the lowly to join its bridal company. The oysterman at his barrow, the carman at his dray, the smith at his anvil, the plowman in the field, equally with the highest in the land,-all feel that they are free, all know that they may be anything but gods. Among the best in our Senate, and the brightest in our letters, are those who have toiled their way up to greatness, who have learned How sublime a thing it is To suffer and be strong. These men have become great, not so much from the facilities for a common knowledge, which our systems of education afford, as from the self-reliance which a sense of freedom confers. The moment you make a man politically equal to his fellow, you give him a consciousness that he is so in all respects. This is the source of confidence. And how many, from a want of this royal egotism, have smothered thoughts of fire, and died victims to their own unsatisfied yearnings. Confidence rolls the stone from the sepulchre and liberates the imprisoned Deity of mind. Upon this confidence, which every American feels, backed by freedom of opinion and community of knowledge, both of which are the gift of our institutions, we may rely for a literature-a national literature, not confined to a few vast minds, intellectual Pyramids which enshrine the "Great Thought" of a nation, but a literature which shall be equally the offspring and property of our whole population. VERSES SUGGESTED BY THE DEATH OF AN INDIAN CHILD ON THE WESTERN CARS. Who who, may tell thy boundless power; "Oh! mighty reaper Death??? Who trace thy pathway when thou com'st To still Life's fleeting breath? To some, thou comest as a friend, To bring the wounded spirit balm, To some, when pale disease hath worn, The trembling silver chord of life, To some, when Time's cold touch hath left Its impress on the brow- But seem less bright than now. To some, while bloom is on the cheek, While sounds of mirth upon the lip, To one, thou camest when around, When many hearts with joy beat high, But there was one amid that throng, She watched with dim and tearful eye, She pressed it fondly in her arms, The wayward spirit would not rest, And soon the "harp of thousand strings," As one by one its numbers ceased, That the last strain it e'er should breathe, And when they all were hushed and still, She laid the form so still in death, Though of a darker race than ours, 'Tis true that lordly pride may fire, 'Tis true the noble Indian tribes All spiritless they roam. But Time and Change can never dim Which binds a mother to her child, The golden link that Death had loosed, Behold her when the throng hath left, Behold her as beneath the sod, No pomp is there-no nodding plume, But cease, sad mourner, cease thy grief, There is a joy for those who mourn, A balm for every wounded heart, Kneel at the cross and thou shalt feel, And mid the shadows of thy path, "Twill calm each grief within thy breast, Twill bid thy sorrows flee And gently guide thy fragile bark, And when thy spirit tires and faints, Where Death may never shed its blight, LITERARY NOTICES. THE WRITINGS OF GEORGE WASHINGTON, WITH A LIFE OF THE AUTHOR: BY JARED SPARKS. New York: Harper & Brother. This work may be said to possess a national character in a higher sense than almost any other work of which our country can boast. It contains a picture of Washington drawn by his own hand; or rather it is Washington himself speaking in the productions of his own great mind. Dr. Sparks has rendered admirable service to his generation and indeed to all coming generations, as the editor of this immortal work; to say nothing of the fact that the Biography which he has given us in the first volume, is worthy alike of the subject and of the author. The Messrs Harper, into whose hands the work has now fallen, are bringing out a second edition of it at a considerably reduced price; and though it is still a somewhat expensive work, it is fairly within the ability of a considerable portion of the community to purchase it. It ought especially to find its way into all our public libraries, so as to be accessible, so far as possible, to all the youth of the nation. The first three volumes only have yet been published. WASHINGTON AND HIS GENERALS: BY J. T. HEADLEY. Two volumes. New York: Baker & Scribner. Though the first volume only of this work has yet appeared, it may no doubt fairly be taken as a sample of the whole work, and it can hardly be necessary to say more of it than that it is what might naturally be expected by those who have become acquainted with the author through his previous productions. Whatever may be the subject of which he treats, there is an unwonted fascination in his style, which enchains the reader, nolens volens ; and it is often found no easy matter to separate one's self from him, till the last line of the last page of the book has been reached. The present work, though it may not be superior in point of execution to that on "Napoleon and his Marshals," has an interest for the American reader, which the latter never can possess. It exhibits a striking and condensed view of the promi nent milltary actors in our revolution, in connection with the more important |