Acknowledging, when based upon the purest religion, but one God in Heaven, and but one vicegerent on earth, it is led to question the supremacy of pontiffs, and the divine rights of kings. It teaches respect for certain inalienable rights and obligations, on which it is the very spirit of despotism to infringe. Believing in a duty of national as well as individual progress, it recognizes a right of revolution, directly subversive of a conservative, arbitrary power.

Here also, public amusements, though aspiring to the dignity of instructors, exercise an influence corrupting and fatal. Begetting a distaste for the higher fruitions of which we are susceptible, they lay open the mind to the withering influence of vice. They create a centre of attraction without the family circle, thus scattering seeds of discord in this cradle of universal brotherhood. They subject reason to the apotheosis of feeling, and thus snatch from life its most unerring guide. They unnerve the authority of conscience, the indwelling Deity, the inexorable judge. Thus enfeebled in his virtuous affections, man is incapacitated from virtuous action. History is not silent. Need we look beyond the amphitheatre for the brutal voluptuousness that characterized the Roman empire? How the imperial autocracy was built up and again torn down by these "instruments of despotism;" how the Catonian severity of the old republic was eaten out by a more than "Daphnic luxury;" how the Roman mind was hardened, and its sensibilities blunted, by the combats of the arena, until the cry "Christianos ad leones," could only fill the measure of their fury; how the former queen of the seas is at present affected by the only modern representatives of these ancient sports, the chronicles of the Coliseum and the Plaza tell, too truly,-too faithfully.

Amusements strike a death-blow to public spirit,-the main stay of a free government. Guarding jealously the welfare of the state, public spirit with provident forethought anchors its aspirations in a paramount system of ordinances, which shall forever proclaim to unfeeling ambition, "Hitherto shalt thou come but no further :" with cautious wisdom it seeks for upright statesmen, who shall embody the spirit and vitalize the energies of the nation; and, above all, with open hearted benevolence it extends to every class its crown jewels of free thought, free speech, and free action. If it fosters a modicum of social and temperate enjoyment as conducive to public fraternization, it dissuades from a general and inordinate devotion to amusements as inimical to disinterested benevolence, -its ideal in action. It dissuades from them as eminently selfish in

their nature, and militating against the very essence of patriotism. Principles of action so mutually repulsive, cannot coëxist in the human mind. Let self-gratification be made the goal of existence, and interests of real importance will suffer a fatal neglect. Ingulfment in the dizzy maelstrom of pleasure precludes a cordial sympathy in generous emotion. Personal popularity is made the purchase of profusion,--the touchstone of integrity. Hero worship, Phoenix-like, rises from the ashes of patriotism. The high road to dictatorial power is paved for him who has the courage and dexterity to guide hither the chariot of state. By a tacit, though vital compact, the priceless gem of liberty is bartered for a worse than useless bauble. As the sea chisels its way into the yielding cliff, not by the overpowering force of a single mighty billow, but by the attrition of an infinite series of minute ripples, each invisible in its effects; so despotism accomplishes its work, not by a sudden and violent confiscation of ancient prerogatives, but in the garb of an unwilling recipient by the gradual and almost unperceived assumption of national liberties.

In their action upon society, public amusements have, in common with monarchical power, a centralizing influence. Obviously, such a disposition of forces is favorable to the preponderance of absolutism. Large masses of men, when beneath the eye of a regnant authority, are more readily controlled than an equal number scattered over a province. The searching eye of a police will more easily detect the first outworkings of sedition. Unable to take refuge in mountain fastnesses, a standing army can be brought to bear upon them. The Alps have been most heroic defenders of Swiss independence. In the streets of Altorf, Tell and his partisans would have quailed before the armies of Hapsburg. The circumjacent country is usually governed, in a great measure, by the action of its metropolis. The history of despotisms is often but a history of cities. "Paris, c'est la France," is an expression of significant import. Let servility and quiet be once established within the walls of a despotic capital, and, among the rural population, a feeling of reverence will naturally spring up for a regal authority never seen, and known only through exaggerated rumors. "Omne ignotum pro magnifico," is a maxim of almost universal application.

This overgrowth of a central city is a necessary consequent of the royal presence. Here is collected all that a kingdom can afford to gratify taste, or flatter power. Architecture contributes its "divinest forms" to

garnish the abodes of princes. A sumptuous court attends the beck of a monarch, whose smile is fortune; whose frown, ruin.

Amusements, too, must be furnished for the idle and pleasure loving, that flock thither from every portion of the realm. Galleries of painting and of sculpture will be filled with ideals of the grandest material forms. Eloquent orators! yet uttering no word for liberty. The magic wand of art will call up in the midst of crowded streets, miniature landscapes of mountain and vale, grove and cascade, rivaling nature's fairest creations. The stage will be robed in its most gorgeous apparel, and, while it teaches respect for earthly power, will be maintained by kingly munificence. Rich and poor will unite in doing homage to Thespian and Euterpean genius.

The stately pageants of a sensuous religion will inculcate a reverence for the power, but not a love for the goodness of God. In an alliance of church and state, despotism assumes its most terrible form.* When the sublimest conception, which the human understanding is capable of grasping, is thrown into the scale against freedom; when an earthly obedience is made the sole avenue to the portals of an heavenly fruition; when religion is made to minister to man's most frivolous desires, as well as to his noblest aspirations; when the voice of God is made to speak for its downfall, the "forlorn hope" of liberty is indeed lost. The despot then rules alone, and is indeed a mon-arch.

It is in the deeply rooted attachment to pleasures, that reformers, both religious and political, have encountered their most vigorous opposition. A radical change is seldom effected by a single stroke. They are relinquished, if at all, in the natural progress from corporeal to intellectual enjoyment, from refinement to vulgar sensuality. Only by an incorporation of the pompous ceremonials of Paganism into its own more refined worship, could Christianity be made acceptable to the Romans. The carelessness of liberty during the reign of Charles II is an evidence that the terrible reaction that followed the suppression of amusements, was working out its legitimate results.

Such being the inevitable tendencies of public amusements, when unrestrained by the safeguard of an unflinching morality, it would be natural to expect that demagogues would employ them to induce the premature decay of free institutions, and despots to give stability and perpetuity to an authority already established. Such is, universally, the fact. From the time when Semiramis rode over the walls of Babylon, attended by the

Pres. Woolsey.

rude splendor of her barbaric court, to the time when Fortune's last favorite dictated festive plays to Parisian boards at the birth of an heir; public amusements have entered largely into the structure of all absolute polities. Beneath their protecting aegis, Despotism maintains an almost undivided sway, from Moscow to Madrid, from Paris to Pekin. From the papal throne is still proclaimed to two obedient continents, the infallibility of the Romish church. The prospects of tyrants were apparently never more flattering. Like well-trained athletes, they have risen from each contest with courage unabated, and strength unimpared.

What then shall be the end of all this? Shall despotism forever triumph? Shall man never be free? Shall papal tyranny see the end as it has seen the beginning of every existing government?* Shall "leagued oppression" always prove too strong for the Nemesis of patriotism? Not So. As the seed of wheat, though slumbering for many centuries in mummy cerements, when placed in its proper soil, wakes to life and brings forth its ripened grain; so shall this seed of liberty, though smothered long, very long beneath its load of resistless power, finally, by the resuscitative force of a mighty public will, be brought to light, and bring forth its perfect fruit unto everlasting life.

Names and Nicknames.

THERE seems to exist a pretty general belief that there is nothing in a name If so we have chosen a rather fruitless theme for disquisition, since according to the proverb "e nihlo nihil fit." Yet there is not wanting sufficient authority for embodying trifles and nothings in grave discourse. Philips, happier than many of his brethren in the possession of a shilling, gratefully selected it as the subject of his song. Cowper sat down to write upon a sofa. Shakspeare made "Much ado about nothing." Rochester penned a fine Latin poem "De nihilo," and doubtless many Berkleian aspirants would be glad to imitate his example. But inasmuch as "No" often means Yes; and " Nothing" in the mouths of school-boys and others frequently admits of a pregnant signification, let us proceed to give to this nothing a local habitation and a name.

* Macaulay.

Reader! There is everything in a name. Of course it gives us great pain to propose any doctrine contrary to the views of Shakspeare or Polyphemus, but we are ready to be martyrs in the cause, especially since all the Democrats in the country and Louis Napoleon to boot are on our side. To this main army may be added such humbler allies as mad-dogs, statement of facts' orators, forgers and autograph collectors. We are further persuaded of the great world of meaning inherent in names, by the extraordinary liberality and pertinacity with which they are administered in our institutions of learning. At infant school the gaping urchin begins by taking little doses of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. At preparatory school come the Muses and Furies, the seven kings of Rome, and the five rivers of hell. And when college comes, the hopeless disciple of hard names is smilingly introduced to the ac quaintance of unnumbered tribes, whose life was as nomadic as the ascent of their own names, when the ingenuous young American makes palatal and guttural onslaught upon his decasyllabic foes. Tribes that would baffle the patience of Job and the nominivorous memory of Mithridates-tribes that did not know where they lived themselves-tribes that start up from every corner of the map like Robin Hood's outlaws, and then dive to the opposite corners of other maps, as if playing hide and seek-Sacians and Sacesinians, Boreans and Hyperboreans, Kamskatchans and Pottawottamies, ring-tailed monkeys and speckled-nosed Jews all mingle together, by spasmodic locomotion, in double and twisted entanglement, till each individual jawbreaker becomes, as the poet so vividly expresses it,

In poetry and fiction the force of a name is quite apparent. We have heard of some one who wished to popularize the bard of Scios, and thus begins-

The wrath of Jenkinson the direful spring

Of woes unnumbered Grecian goddess sing."

Now, no one in his senses can have the slightest interest to know why Mr. Jenkinson was angry, because this quasi offspring of Peleus is a vulgar fellow who has had the small pox, and sells old clothes round the corner. For the beautiful names of Tennyson or Poe-for Ligeia or Lilian for Annabel or Isabel substitute Wilhelmina, Sophobonista, or any feminine Christian prefix that ends in y, (except Fanny and Mary,) and the charm is gone.