to welcome him into the rude tent, to spread out before him the simple meal, and when he would depart, to bid him God speed, without making a market of kindness, and setting a price on good will. "Or again, to retrace the annals of this nation, there were the honest days of good King Alfred, when gold and silver shall have been left unguarded on the highways, while men knew not what it was to steal. Would the shining heaps be so very safe among us, their enlightened and virtuous posterity?-or shift the scene to classic ground; to the land of Numa, the wise and the peaceful; of Brutus, the stern and the upright; of the self-devoting Scævola, of the patriot Curtius, of Regulus, preferring death to falsehood; of Arria, dying to encourage a husband's faultering resolve; the land of high-minded matrons and hardy soldiers; the eternal city, whose wisdom and prowess made her the mistress of the world; then cross to the Grecian Peninsula, visit Thermopyla and Marathon, Athens and Lacedemon. Say, are our senators so much more upright and incorruptible than the Roman ? Are our politicians so much more noble-minded than he, who when he lost his election as one of the three hundred, went away rejoicing that there were found in Sparta, three hundred better men than he ?-Are our soldiers so much more brave than Leonidas' little band ?-our citizens so much more temperate than they who sat down to the black broth at Lycurgus' tables? Or, to speak even of the refined arts, have we rivalled Cicero ? Have we better orators than Demosthenes ? More cunning sculptors than Phidias, more finished painters than Appelles? Say, are we, with all our vaunted experience, so far beyond what millions have been, ages, long ages ago ?" These are melancholy views ;-are they correct ones also? Civilization has corrupted the Indian; true; but is not the very circumstance a proof, that the unfortunate savage with all his rude and romantic virtues, was far back in the race of improvement: that these his virtues were the virtues of inexperience not of conviction; were, therefore precarious, unstable, the offspring of varying impulse; at the mercy of circumstance; liable at any moment to be exchanged for vice. Such virtues are amiable and interesting, but not of a useful, not of a permanent character. They survive not the knowledge of good and evil. They are like the brilliant hues of the early dawn; they fade away, even at that moment when the luminary rises that is to enlighten the world. We err, therefore, if we class them high in the scale of improvement. The very experience of vice is often a step in advance of the virtue of ignorance; in advance, because it is frequently the sole means by which man, distinguishing his errors, rises to the virtue of knowledge; I mean, that virtue which, (shining here and there so brightly through the mass of civilization's abuses) can give a reason for the faith that is in it; has been adopted knowingly, not received by chance; has oeen selected in preference to vice, not merely imbibed during the absence of temptation. The half-civilized Indian, then, may, even in his degradation, be considered, not happier or better indeed, but nearer permanent virtue and happiness, than when he roamed the woods, untempted and unseduced. So is it also with many of the virtues of the patriarchal age. The patriarchs were simple, not because they contemned luxury, but because they knew it not; they were disinterested, not because they despised the venalties of civilized commerce, but because such commerce had yet no existence. To refuse hospitality would have been, in these early times, to doom the houseless traveller to death, while to accord it was to procure the rare and valued privilege of obtaining) what could not otherwise be obtained) the news of distant, perhaps unknown countries: it was a virtue, then, of the humblest rank, such as any one but the utterly heartless would cheerfully practise. And then, with the lights, let us take the shadows also. If the story, so highly revered, of the world's infancy bear even a shadow of truth, little cause have we to regret, that we lived not in those primitive ages. Modern warfare is bloody and brutal enough; but modern warfare is tender mercy compared to the savage slaughterings of the olden time. Now, cities are sacked; then, nations were annihilated: now, those who resist are slain; then, the mother was stabbed on the domestic threshold; the daughter led away by her parents' murderers, to slavery and dishonour, the suckling dashed against the stones. Nay, is it not recorded that "they saved alive none that breatheth ?" Are not the details before us-to select one pre-eminent sample of primitive horrors-are not the foul details before us of the Midianite massacre; the slaughter on one day, on one spot, of tens of thousands: perpetrated under no apologetical excitement, in cold blood, in deliberate, unimpassioned brutality; perpetrated (spirit of Mercy!) on those whom the hungry lion himself shall pity and spare--on women and infants alone! Tell us, if you will, of some monster-pirate-such do show themselves, now and then, on our modern seas-whose eye knows no pity, whose sword no hesitation, to whose hand the blood of hundreds clings: but the man of crime is outlawed, is execrated now; the relation of his deeds falls on the ear, at this day, as the report of some super-human phenomenon, out of nature, almost beyond belief. Speak to us-you may with truth-of the unfeeling selfishness of this still mercenary age: but let one existing nation perpetrate one single atrocity to match the common-place brutalities of ancient Israelitish warfare, even the dull sensibilities of modern civilization will burst forth in one universal cry of abhorrence; the nations of the earth will instinctively rise in mass, and unite, with far readier zeal than against the black flag of the Algerine, to annihilate this scandal on mankind! Individuals there have been, in every age of the world, who lived, as it were, a-head of their time, possessing knowledge and virtues far beyond their age. Alfred the Great seems to have been one of these; but, for the romantic stories regarding the untouched gold and silver exposed in a country that had just been convulsed by civil war, and had for ages been the scene of sanguinary, intestine commotions; let us bear in mind, that they emanate from a period removed only by a century or two from the fabulous times of Prince Arthur, and his magical sword, and his knights of the round table. Let us recollect, that from the earliest period of authentic history, Great Britain has been gaining in liberty and knowledge; achieving, in early days, her trial by jury, winning from King John her Magna Charta, and from Charles her scarcely less famous Habeas Corpus Act. Let us reflect, that, even now, the great question of popular and governmental reform is, as at no former period, stirring up her millions from Cornwall to the farthest Orcades; that question which even to moot was little less than the crime of sedition or lese-majesty, one little century since. Let us be reminded, that, throughout Europe, at this moment, even the peasant can talk of the rights of man, and not a crowned head can tell how soon these rights may be more than talked of Is not Philip of France even now fain to acknowledge himself King by the voice of the people, not by the grace of God? and when, until the last century, has it been the fashion to talk of the serf as the creator of his suzerain, or regard the mob as the elector of its monarch. When, until now, have the PEOPLE, the producing millions, been admitted to play the chief part on the stage of history. When, until now, have the people been spoken of, spoken to, cared for, instructed? The classic schools of philosophy still win our veneration; but was it the people who walked the groves of Academus, or filled the Stoic Portico, or even that thronged the garden of the virtuous Epicurus? Were there Mechanics' Institutes in Athens;-common schools throughout Greece? Was it not the few, the favoured, selected few, that ancient philosophy deigned to address; and, for the peasantry of Attica, of what were they composed? of men too ignorant even to scrawl on the condemning shell the name of him whom they banished, because they were tired of hearing him surnamed "the Just." Leonidas' soldiers were brave, Lycurgus' pupils were temperate-but modern history can exhibit a courage of a higher order, a temperance of a nobler kind than Sparta's. Modern Paris has far, far outshone ancient Lacedemon. Her millions have been philosophers - practical philosophers. Oppressed, insulted, outraged, they rose, unarmed men against a weaponed soldiery, undisciplined youths against a regular army. They conquered. The power was in their hands, the oppressor at their feet. Their spirits yet smarting under the wrongs of a bleeding country, their pulses yet throbbing from the perusal of royalty's iniquitous ordmances, heated by combat, flushed with victory, absolved from law, released from governmental control, what was the conduct of France's People? We vaunt the moderation of Alexander, and the continence of Scipio; the Parisian populace have outdone them both. Each one among the thousands in that Revolution (bloodless and blameless beyond any the world ever saw)-each one of these thousands was more than a Scipio, more than an Alexander. Dominion was theirs; they laid it down: riches were spread out before them; they touched them not; the men who had sought their lives were prostrate; they pardoned them. For evil they returned good; for violence, moderation; for the outrages of a tyrant, the courtesies of freemen. This one isolated occurrence might alone convince us, if other proof were wanting, that the world is no longer what it was; and that, while, in ancient times, individuals rising from the mass deserve our admiration, in modern days the masses themselves are catching the spirit of the age. At what former era of the world, in what nation, under what circumstances, has a struggle of such a character occurred? Will the most enthusiastic admirer of antiquity venture to assert, that, in the best days of Greece and Rome, the people were capable of an effort thus magnanimous? They were not. No such event ever happened. It is the growth of modern improvement-of modern improvement only. But it needs not to rest the proofs of the world's gradual advance on any single fact, however striking. It may be read in the abandonment of a thousand prejudices-the improvement of a thousand institutions. What should we say now to a law, like that of Rome, giving us the power of life and death over our offspring, thus virtually justifying in a parent the murder of a son or a daughter? Do we reduce our prisoners of war to the grade of menial slaves, their very lives depending, even by law, on the will of a master, at whose tomb, perhaps, they are at last to be sacrificed by hundreds? Do we give the creditor power to sell his debtor into vassalage? Do we make the shedding of human blood our sole trade, as did the Spartans; or does our Chief Magistrate, (as did they of Rome) consult the entrails of animals to decide whether we shall go to war with other nations. What has become of the trial by ordeal, so highly esteemed in the middle ages? Or of the zeal against witchcraft so ardent once on either side of the Atlantic? What has become, even of our grandmothers' faith in ghosts and haunted castles? Who is found now to study astrology, or read his horoscope in the stars? What would a devotee gain among us but pity or ridicule, who should spend forty years on the top of a pillar, or scourge his flesh to laceration, night after night? Or, how would that teacher be received who should assert now, as for centuries was preached and practised, that the rack was the fittest engine for conviction, and the stake the most effectual cure for unbelief? How would an Auto-da-fe suit our modern atmosphere; or in what spirit would Europe and America now receive from a Roman Pontiff the ecclesiastical decree, which was to parcel off to each nation its allotted territory, and to summon before the ghostly tribunal each contumacious sovereign, who should demur to the credentials of God's early Vicegerent: or more assuming, yet the excommunicating ban which was to cut off a whole people from every joy here and every hope hereafter, which was to leave its millions accursed on earth, shut out from heaven; until in sackcloth and ashes, they wept away the blighting anathema, and, by such humble contrition, at length moved the holy man to pity and forgiveness. True it is, that many of the arts and some of the sciences flourished in the olden time. The Apollo of the Vatican stands still, perhaps, unrivalled; and Canova could not mould a lovelier form than that in which the Grecian chisel concentrated the gathered charms of a nation of beauty, and embodied the mythologist's fairest conception of the goddess of love. Athenian orators were eloquent, and Egyptian sages were learned: but how much of the eloquence was mere laboured ornament, and how useless to the people was the learning, beclouded as it was with verbiage, and studiously covered up from the vulgar gaze under a load of ostentatious technicalities! Among the ancients, the sciences were so many mystical crafts, the signs and secrets of which were jealously kept from the mass, and disclosed, with infinite form and ceremony, to the initiated alone. It is but of late years, that the disciple of science has deigned to simplify and translate; formerly, his great object was to obscure and mystify. A British poet hits off the characteristic, not of one, but almost all the ancient schools of philosophy, when he says: The wise men of Egypt were secret as dummies, And even when they most condescend to teach, They packed up their meaning, as they did their mummies, Nor is it unti modern days, that the observer of nature has stooped to separate humble, but useful, facts from showy and useless theories. The ancient naturalist was much like a child blowing soap-balloons. He inflated what little actual knowledge he possessed into some empty hypothesis, filled the gaudy bubble with his own breath, and then sent it up before a gaping crowd, who deemed it little less than some creation of magic, and forgot, in their wondering admiration, to remark, how soon it burst and vanished from their sight, It may not be denied, that there is much of plausible still to urge on the gloomier side. "What," we shall be asked, "has modern science, with all her liberality, done to alleviate the condition, or add to the real happiness of man ?" Look to her high places of triumph, the factories and workshops of |