left the field and the scene a chaos; a world in existence, but not a world reduced to order. The foreigner may see, in the glass which our author has put into his hands, many things in America to laugh at, but there will also be forced on his attention much to admire. In the consultation of his own acquired tastes and habits, if he is tolerably well off in his own country, he may feel for a moment that he would not desire to be a member of such a community as America, but his next thought will be, that America cannot be despised. He may discover a thousand little things, but he will always find them planted by the side of great things. He may see customs and manners which to him would be uncomfortable, but he will behold in the causes that have produced them, a sufficient quantum of redeeming influences to balance the account. He may find a sort of rampant freedom, and a bustle without any apparent order or object, but when he looks deeper, he will discover an indomitable respect for the laws, and a steady, all-ruling purpose in the aims and pursuits of these go-ahead republicans. From the violent political agitations of the community, and the apparent want of compactness and vigor in the body politic, he may imagine that the affairs of the country have brought it to the crisis of its existence; but he will afterward find that it has been in a state of crisis ever since it had any existence at all. In a word, he will be surprised, at every step, at some new development of redeeming qualities, to be set over against such faults, and of guiding, protecting powers, in the giddy whirl of such an active, bustling, and onward march of society. An enigma still the country and its institutions may be, sufficient to puzzle the politicians of the old world; but its characters are reflected from the dome of heaven, and he who would thoroughly understand them, must climb and tread among the stars. As M. DE TOCQUEVILLE more than intimates, it was not man, but GOD, that made America. It is one of the results of a high and inscrutable Providence. Man opposes heaven, but heaven, in spite of man, rules over the earth. 'The powers that be,' and that have been, have armed themselves against the introduction and establishment of free governments; but God, from his throne, has decreed otherwise, and the whole state of the civilized world is rapidly and irresistibly tending to this result. Such seems to be the conviction of our author, and we are not disposed to dissent from him. we may M. DE TOCQUEVILLE has certainly bestowed on us some compliments say, many. For all that he has done, we may respect ourselves, and shall be respected. Comparing all the faults he has found in us, with the excellencies he has awarded to us, we are still a great, and may be a proud, people. Our virtues we are accustomed to know, and perhaps sufficiently addicted to appreciate. But our author says: 'There are certain truths which the Americans can only learn from strangers or from experience.' Of course, they are the more unpleasant truths, in other words, our faults. Look at this: 'If great writers have not at present existed in America, the reason is very simply given in these facts: there can be no literary genius, without freedom of opinion; and freedom of opinion does not exist in America! Surely, if this be a truth, we have first learned it from a stranger. But the particular and only application which he makes of it, is rather suspicious: 'There is no public organ of infidelity.' That is, the tyranny of public opinion is such, that infidelity cannot show its head, and front, and body, in an organized form. On this point, this simple statement may suffice for all the needful purposes of a reply. Nor would we suggest that M. DE TOCQUEVILLE was himself an infidel, and grieved at this negative fact. We have on the whole set him down for a Christian. But it was rather a blunder, at least, that he should rest the truth, and hazard the influence, of his statement, on such a reference. Again our author says: 'I know no country in which there is so little independence of mind, and freedom of discussion, as in America.' But observe, it is supported by the same reason, occult indeed, though allied to another that is cousin german: 'In any constitutional state of Europe, every sort of religious and political theory may be advocated and propagated abroad.' Mr. SPENCER, in his notes to this work, has very properly qualified and rebuked our author's treatment of this subject. We think M. D. TOCQUEVILLE was led into error here, first by his theory, and next for lack of information as to its practical operation. Reckoning the majority as an unity, and assuming that men are the same in the aggregate as they are severally, he jumps to the conclusion, that the absolute sway of a majority is as dangerous as that of an individual: 'For these reasons,' he says, 'I can never willingly invest any number of my fellow creatures with that unlimited authority which I should refuse to any one of them.' If there be truth and justness in the following statement, it is tremendous indeed: "In America, the majority raises very formidable barriers to the liberty of opinion. Within these barriers, an author may write whatever he pleases, but he will repent if he ever steps beyond them. Not that he is exposed to the terrors of an auto-da-fé, but he is tormented by the slights and persecution of daily obloquy. His political career is closed for ever, since he has offended the only authority which is able to promote his success. Every sort of compensation, even that of celebrity, is refused him. Before he published his opinions, he imagined that he held them in common with many others; but no sooner has he declared them openly, than he is loudly censured by his overbearing opponents, while those who think, without having the courage to speak, like him, abandon him in silence. He yields at length, oppressed by the daily efforts he has been making, and subsides into silence, as if he was tormented by remorse for having spoken the truth. "Fetters and headsmen were the coarse instruments which tyranny formerly employed; but the civilization of our age has refined the arts of despotism, which seemed, however, to have been sufficiently perfected before. The excesses of monarchical power had devised a variety of physical means of oppression; the democratic republics of the present day have rendered it as entirely an affair of the mind, as that will which it is intended to coerce. Under the absolute sway of an individual despot, the body was attacked, in order to subdue the soul; and the soul escaped the blows which were directed against it, and rose superior to the attempt; but such is not the course adopted by tyranny in democratic republics; there the body is left free, and the soul enslaved. The Sovereign (the majority) can no longer say, 'You shall think as I do, on pain of death; but, you are free to think differently from me, and to retain your life, your property, and all that you possess; but if such be your determination, you are henceforth an alien among your people. You may retain your civil rights, but they shall be useless to you, for you will not be chosen by your fellow citizens, though you solicit their suffrages; and they will affect to scorn you, if you solicit their esteem. You will remain among men, but you will be deprived of the rights of mankind. Your fellow creatures will shun you like an impure being; and those who are most persuaded of your innocence, will abandon you, too, lest they should be shunned in their turn. Go in peace! I have given you your life, but it is an existence incomparably worse than death."'" That a man who had observed so profoundly and correctly on other matters, and an author who had written so well, and discoursed so eloquently, upon them, could fall into this egregious blunder of theory and fact, excites our astonishment. Had we not other reasons for giving him credit for a christian belief, we should still apprehend that he had found some occasion in actual life to sympathize with the cbloquy of an avowed and open infidel, laboring to propagate his sentiments, but defeated and borne down by public opinion, or with some other renegade to well-received and sacred opinions, who had dared to outrage the common feeling of the community. In our country, this description applies to no other case of fact. And yet our author appears to apply it to politics. Again: "When an individual or a party is wronged in the United States, to whom can he apply for redress? If to public opinion, public opinion constitutes the majority; if to the legislator, it represents the majority, and implicitly obeys its injunctions; if to the executive power, it is appointed by the majority, and remains a passive tool in its hands; the public troops consist of the majority under arms; the jury is the majority invested with the right of determining judicial cases; and in certain states, even the judges are elected by the majority. However iniquitous or absurd the evil of which you complain may be, you must submit to it as well as you can.' Doubtless there may have been some occasion for observing the tyranny of opinion in our country, when armed with the influence of the majority, both in the political and religious world, and in all other forms of the social state. But we are not aware, than any more perfect state of society has yet been invented, than the rule of the majority. And as our author appears to be an advocate of free governments, and in most respects an admirer of ours, we will just introduce the form he has suggested as a more perfect way: 'That the legislative power should be so constituted as to represent the majority, without necessarily being the slave of its passions; an executive, so as to retain a certain degree of uncontrolled authority; and a judiciary, so as to remain independent of the two other powers.' Very well. We know not but we would go for it, if it can be made practicable; though there seems to be so much of the indefinite in the whole, and so much of the nicety of detail to be settled, we fear there might be difficulties in the way. Without descending to the minutiae of criticism, which lie open to notice on the pages of the volume before us, we may say, in conclusion, that the author has executed a work for which the world ought to thank him the European world, and the American world. He has shown us up to foreigners and to ourselves; and though he has found some fault in us, he has left us enough to be proud of. He has convinced us more than ever, that if just to ourselves, and true to our principles, we can yet become, if not the greatest, yet one of the greatest and happiest people on earth. We have indeed much to make us anxious, but much to hope for. M. DE TOCQUEVILLE has demonstrated one thing our positive and relative importance; and henceforth, so far as the influence of our author may go, and we predict it will not be small, the world will be constrained to acknowledge it. Let the following quotations suffice for this point, and for our part of duty on the great theme: "It must not be imagined, that the impulse of the British race in the new world can be arrested. The dismemberment of the union, and the hostilities that might ensue, the abolition of republican institutions, and the tyrannical government that might succeed it, may retard this impulse, but they cannot prevent it from ultimately fulfilling the destinies to which that race is reserved. No power upon earth can close upon the emigrants that fertile wilderness, which offers resources to all industry, and a refuge from all want. Future events, of whatever nature they may be, will not deprive the Americans of their climate, or of their inland seas, of their great rivers, or of their exuberant soil. Nor will bad laws, revolutions, and anarchy, be able to obliterate that love of prosperity, and that spirit of enterprise, which seem to be the distinctive characteristics of their race, or to extinguish that knowledge which guides them on their way." ** "The time will come, when 150,000,000 of men will be living in North America, equal in condition, (if the institutions remain unchanged,) the progeny of one race, owing their origin to the same cause, and preserving the same civilization, the same language, the same religion, the same habits, the same manners, and imbued with the same opinions, propagated under the same forms. The rest is uncertain, but this is certain; and it is a fact new to the world; a fact fraught with such portentous consequences, as to baffle the efforts even of imagination. "There are, at the present time, two great nations in the world, which seem to tend toward the same end, although they started from different points: I allude to the Russians and the Americans. Both of them have grown up unnoticed; and while the attention of mankind was directed elsewhere, they have suddenly assumed a most prominent place among the nations; and the world learned their existence and their greatness at almost the same time. All other nations seem to have nearly reached their natural limits, and only to be charged with the maintenance of their power; but these are still in the act of growth. All the others are stopped, or continue to advance with extreme difficulty. These are proceeding with ease and with celerity along a path to which the human eye can assign no term. The American struggles against the natural obstacles which oppose him; the adversaries of the Russians are men. The former combats the wilderness and savage life; the latter, civilization, with all its arts and arms. The conquests of the one, therefore, are gained by the ploughshare; those of the other by the sword. The Anglo-American relies upon personal interest to accomplish his ends, and gives free scope to the unguided exertions and common sense of the citizens; the Russian centres all the authority of society in a single arm. The principal instrument of the former is freedom; of the latter, servitude. Their starting point is different, and their courses are not the same; yet each of them seems to be marked out by the will of heaven to sway the destinies of half the globe." We have already briefly referred to the handsome style in which the publishers present this book to the public; a style, indeed, which distinguishes all the works from their press, and for preserving which, they deserve the thanks of every lover of good types, white paper, and clear printing. FALL OF THE ROMAN French of M. Guizot, First American, from GENERAL HISTORY OF CIVILIZATION IN EUROPE, FROM THE A THOROUGH perusal of this excellent work, has convinced us that it is in all respects what is claimed for it by the translator. The object of the author was to give a general view of European civilization, from the fall of the Roman empire, and the invasion of the barbarians, to the present time. The manner in which he has executed this task, is original, grand, and philosophical. He has sought out and placed before his reader the elementary principles of which the present social system of Europe is formed. He has shown how essentially this system differs from all others, ancient or modern; and he accounts for it from the great diversity of materials of which it is composed. He makes to pass in review before us what it derived from the Roman empire, what was brought into it by the barbarians, by the feudal aristocracy, by the Church, by free cities and communities, and by royalty; all these he considers as so many ingredients, by the mixing, pounding, and fusion of which, the present state of society has been produced; a society, on this very account, superior to any which ever existed before, and which is still advancing toward perfection. But M. Guizot's lectures are not confined to a mere nomenclature of these ingredients; he describes the seeds from which these elements of our civilization have sprung, the soil by which they have been nourished, the fruits which they have borne, the parts of them which are good and profitable for civilization, and, therefore, to be prized and preserved; and those which, on the contrary, are noxious or useless, and therefore to be cast away or destroyed. To this he adds the effects produced by the fusion and opposition of these various principles; and, in tracing out these, he gives us concise but brilliant sketches of the several great events which have had a marked influence upon the destinies of Europe, among which stand most conspicuous, the Crusades, the Reformation, the English Revolution, and some others. All these are treated in an original and masterly manner; indeed, the fourteen lectures, in which the history of European civilization is contained, are fourteen great historical pictures; every one portraying some striking and important fact or event, and displaying, not only in the grouping and throwing out of the principal subject, but likewise in the introduction, disposal, and finish of the minuter details, the conception, the skill, and the workmanship of a master. Still the work is strictly a unity. In the fourteen pictures collectively, we have one great and entire subject-the history of civilization in Europe; and that so told as cannot fail to please and instruct the historian, the student, and the philosopher. Both the typographical execution of the volume, and its externals, are in keeping with its internal excellence. FIRESIDE EDUCATION. BY THE AUTHOR OF PETER PARLEY'S TALES. In one volume. pp. 396. New-York: F. J. HUNTINGTON. THE importance of public instruction is beginning to be felt with deep solicitude in this country. The necessity of a better system of education than the ingenuity of man has yet discovered, is acknowledged every where. Had there existed a true philosophy of mind, the difficulties which our fathers encountered in devising schemes for mental improvement, would have necessarily been obviated, since the educing of the faculties must have been directed by the same analysis which made them known. Dugald Stewart felt the importance of this truth, but his genius was too circumscribed for its illustration. He had sense enough to appreciate the maxims of Lord Bacon, and he acknowledged the importance of clearing the mind of those antiquated forms of error which obscure the intellectual vision, and cloud it with prejudice; but he wanted that originalness which can perceive the true relations of things, and which is indispensable to the philosophic character. He had not even the sagacity to discover, that, while the Organon of his great master was ever on his lips, he had failed to apply the inductive method in his metaphysics, and was of necessity groping in the dark. How could it be expected that much valuable knowledge were attainable from such unguided speculations, or how could a better system of education be hoped from their conclusions ? It is remarkable, that while the other sciences have advanced under the Baconian guidance, the first of all, because the medium of all, should have actually gone backward. In proof of this, the most popular philosophy of the day is verging toward Platonism, while the sensual system, though it still maintains its ground in certain time-worn seminaries of bad metaphysics, is abandoned by every man who is not behind the age in psychology. This, we must confess, is a good sign. It shows that the sensual scheme of intellectuals was found wanting; that it was not adapted to the condition and wants of men; that it failed to make men wiser and happier, but led them into all imaginable error, and flattered them with conclusions equally false and ruinous. The subtle logic of Hume, in carrying out the principles of sensualism with such unanswerable power, convinced the world, long ago, that their foundation was on the sand. The difficulty, however, lay principally in the want of an instrument by which to upheave the monstrous fabric. Such an instrument has never been found to this day, and we fearlessly attribute the want of it to the insufficiency of our logical attainments. We are apt to attribute to Aristotle all that we possess in dialectics, and it is barely possible that he did in reality accomplish that which is passed to his credit. For ourselves, we never believed that the Stagyrite originated the great work which bears his name. It transcends human belief, if we reflect on it a moment. All knowledge has been gradually progressive, and no man has ever been heard of, who, unaided, accomplished every thing that had been done in a science. Beside, if Aristotle had possessed the stupendous mind necessary for the accomplishment of what is charged to him in this one walk of knowledge, he could not have failed to perceive that its architectural projection was incomplete; that there was something wanting in the proportions of the building, which his genius had not supplied. This deficiency is the very instrument to which we have alluded; a method by which the fallacy of many maxims, received as incontrovertible, may be exposed, and by which the sensual philosophy and its atheistical consequences may be demonstrated to be false. To show that such an instrument is wanting, we would ask some one to point out a rule in Aristotle, or in any of his followers, by which the fallacy may be detected and exposed in such propositions as these: Nothing can be made out of nothing;' |