their peculiar positions, according to the character and circumstances of their people, and the new do the same. But how different may be those positions, characters and circumstances! England is not like Spain, yet both are kingdoms. Nor is our America of to-day, like the Rome of two thousand years ago, though both republics. The warnings and prophecies of those who divine the future from the past are, therefore, mainly mere cant. It is barely possible to say man is the same in all ages. He is only so in certain sympathies and wants. Men in all ages and of all conditions, require air to breathe, food and drink for their nourishment, and certain protective raiment and shelter, and these not in the same proportion, but according to climate and occupation; whatever is higher than these instinctive necessities, depends upon the character of races and the age in which they live.

The United States has been compared to Greece and Rome, and warnings have been founded on the comparison. Where is the likeness except in the name Republic? Had Greece or Rome a free people, educated, enlightened, and surrounded by institutions like ours? Had they commerce, agriculture, arts, and sciences like ours? Had they even armies and navies like ours, and what is more, soil, climate, resources, and people dispositioned as in the Anglo-Saxon Republic? Certainly not; therefore there is no parallel between them. Ballotboxes, common schools, the printing press, steam, electricity and Christianity, make us one thing; Greece and Rome with their inheritance and acquirements, were quite another. If we push a conquest or enlarge a bound of empire, some prophet

owl is ready to hoot in our ears-"Remember the fate of the ancient republics!" Away with such nonsense. If the darkness of their ages and the scantiness of their genius belonged to us with the name Republic, we might heed their warnings. But we only bear the name-the old circumstances and conditions are swept away, lost for ever. Warnings are worthy of our heed only when they are based on our violations of true republican principles.

Rome was a military republic, born of force and magnified by unscrupulous conquests. She held her empire together, not by unity of language, not by community of interests and equality of enjoyment among her captive nations, nor by a common government, but by the sword; and when the native hand that held the sword grew weak, the empire was broken and scattered. She had no art but the tread of her legions to compass and annihilate distance; no lightning-winged wires threading the air from ocean to ocean, making near neighbors of men at the remotest distance. Nay, scarcely a feature in common with us had she or her sister, Greece. They were, in the aggregate of respects, infinitely our inferior; and yet there are living, legislating fools who strive to judge us by their standard. Stuff! It were as well to compare the flight of a buzzard through a London fog, with the majestic rise of an eagle, through a transparent atmosphere, into the sun's eye.

THE AMERICAN FARMER.

THERE is a man of prouder heart

And nobler far, I ween,

Than sceptred king or laureled chief,

Or warrior in his sheen,

Who would not give to prince or peer

The splendor of his name,

Though hosts ran shouting at his heels

The heralds of his fame!

See, yonder is his palace high,

His kingdom fair and wide:

His throne the cot, his sword the plough,

His realm the valley side;

His only host his flocks and herds,

And fields of nodding grain,

The subjects of his royal rule-
The lords of his domain !

He wants no helms nor iron hands,
Nor pomp of waving plumes,

Nor vassal knee, nor courtier tread,

Nor India's soft perfumes;

He holds his rein, he guides his steed

And bares his shining blade,

And herds are thinned and fields are strewn—
But not in ruin laid!

A SACRIFICE FOR FREEDOM.

THE subject of the following anecdote was a sister of General Woodhull, and was born at Brookhaven, Lcng Island, in December, 1740. Her husband was a member of the Provincial Convention which met in May, 1775, and of the Convention which was called two years after, to frame the first State Constitution.

While Judge William Smith was in the Provincial Congress, his lady was met, at a place called Middle Island, by Major Benjamin Tallmadge, who was then on his march across Long Island. He told her he was on his way to her house to capture the force then possessing Fort George, and that he might be obliged to burn or otherwise destroy her dwelling-house and other buildings in accomplishing this object. Ready to make any sacrifice for the good of her bleeding country, she promptly assured the Major that the buildings were at his disposal, to destroy or not, as efforts to dislodge the enemy might require.

FOREIGN MILITARY ORGANIZATIONS.

BY THE EDITOR.

FOR what purpose are these men banded together? Why do they meet and drill, and parade the streets, flaunting their foreign banners in the face of our stripes and stars? They come here for bread and work, and a home for their children-many of them to be supported by the private charity and public alms of our citizens. In forsaking the land of starvation and oppression for the land of freedom and plenty, are they not willing to leave their impotent Saints and their trampled ensigns behind them? Let them leave their helpless Saint Patricks and down-trodden shamrocks in the barren bogs of their priest-scourged country, and in this free land of their adoption, embrace the American flag the moment they touch American soil.

If the Irish, or any other people, choose to form benevolent associations for the relief and succor of their suffering fellowcountrymen, there is no cause of complaint against such organizations; but rather of approbation. And to keep warm the home feeling-to vivify the remembrance of the misery from which they have fled-let them wear, as melancholy mementoes, the mottoes and the badges of their wretched native