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ferent hemispheres must be modified-the lan- the relics of more barbarous periods, which, like guage, the destiny of mankind must be altered-iron fetters, bind them to an inheritance of poverty, the assimilating tendencies are hastened, and man will have in these a guerdon of general protection or a chain to general degradation. Are they not the efficient means to enlighten the nations-to pass away the leaden lethargy that suspends the progress of some—to revive them, to recall and redeem them from their tottering tendencies to topple to their ruin and place them upon a broad platform of equal and universal civilization, of equal and universal progress?

ignorance, and oppression. Individual and segregated man begins to think, to feel, to act, without incurring the penalties of treason; and thus thinking, feeling, and acting, must combine, peaceably if it may be, by convulsion if needs be, to change an order of things, oppressive without reason, distinctive without general benefit. A system that separates to the use of royal descent, to princes, dukes, marquises, earls, viscounts, barons "et id omne genus," with or without brains, tracts of terThese effects have already been partially fore- ritorial munificence, to be appropriated to pleasure shadowed in the regenerating influences of com- or to taste, while want and famine are wasting the merce. It has gradually, for the last few centu- lives of thousands fashioned like themselves, whose ries, been lifting the dark pall of superstition and blood, though honored with less distinction, is disignorance, that the middle ages hung upon the na- honored with less crime. Think you that such tions; and has expanded the horizon of civiliza- can be so that such inequality and injustice can tion, almost to the borders of the earth; so that be borne in this age, when light is diffusing a spirit cations that were bolted to the ground, with all the of redemption from the fetid coils of ignorance? infernal machinery that is forged in the workshops Think you when the very bowels of political opof ignorance, witchcraft, and error, are rising from pression are being opened and its accursed heresies their bed of blood and brutality, to enjoy the rays are heralded from the prolific jaws of a thouof a purer light that is beaming from the know-sand presses and borne with electric precipitation ledge of other nations. The great divisions of the through the wide universe, to be conned over and earth, as well as the little isles that float in dismal talked over, so that the learned and the unlearned, solitude, few and far between," are now being one and all that have an eye or an ear can catch visited by the redeeming throng, of a busy and a the promise of deliverance from the grave of opbetter population, that mingling the purer waters of pression-think you, that man, intellectual, thinkscience and learning with the foul streams of shame ing man, with such lights, will hug his chains and and crime, filter and defecate them, to the perma- bear the yoke of bondage without a murmur? Will nent, perhaps, the eternal welfare of their inhabi- not "houseless heads" begin to look up to the comtants, redeeming a land of Juggernaut, that it forts of a shelter? Will not the "unfed sides" may become the land of freedom. Commerce, with hope to enjoy the comforts of a frugal repast, and the auxiliaries which she has imparted efficacy to, "looped and windowed raggedness," anticipate a has furnished a zone like the zodiac, that diffuses cleanly and comfortable habit? Do they not feel the light of learning and truth, before which are the life-giving warmth of the sun of equal politiwithering the weeds of a false morality, to give place cal liberty that is now coursing to his zenith?

"Take physic, pomp;

Expose thyself to feel, what wretches feel
That thou may'st shake the superflux to them
And show the heavens more just."

to the wholesome fruits of a more humane and hallowed system of ethics. Religion and moral light have been, and are yet more being, diffused. The rights of man in a personal and political sense have been, and are yet more being, unlocked. But a little while ago he was looked upon as the mere Governments, however much in love with powappendage and appurtenant of place and suffered er, must yield. Power, however hallowed by prethe conditions of the soil on which he labored. scription, however congenial to the wishes of the The unchanging propriety in estate, has found him few that exercise it, however surrounded by the at the termination of a life devoted to labor, at the bulwarks of time, of talent, or of stratagem, must very point at which he started, to give place to sooner or later, by concession or by compulsion, children doomed to tread the same circle of sub-submit to the terms of a different age and different mission. circumstances. For the absolute Governments of Civil rights, accelerated through the instrumen- the slavish periods of the past are as unfit for the talities which we have briefly noticed, are being conditions of man as he now is, and is becoming, better understood; a sense that "God's heritage" as the free governments of the present would have is abused; that it is inconsistent with the designs been for the periods to which we refer. Hence of Providence and the influences of reason, that we behold that where the name and form of such the few should lord it over the many, alike with or systems prevail, the despotic spirit is gone; and without their sanction, has step by step been work-royalty but hugs the last insignia of its power. ing like leaven in the circles of the masses-diffu- The storm of delusion and darkness is past, and its sing a dissatisfaction with those laws of property, mutterings and shadow are now heard and seen

only in some of the secluded sections of the earth [eries spoken of, exhibiting one of the elements of that are not yet penetrated by the improvements of distinction incident to the condition which must more civilized nations. But the instruments are have existed in ages gone by, when nations so often at work, mighty to the pulling down of the strongholds of tyranny-that, in spite of the resistance of prejudice and ignorance, are drawing such countries closer to the light, and they must see and must

act.

perished. Efficient causes are at work to produce
sooner or later universal freedom, and as a matter
of course such Governments will be instituted as
will secure the greatest amount of individual free-
dom that is consistent with law and order.
No doubt can exist that many attempts will be

As we have advanced from the dark periods of the past, so has been the progress of popular free-made, and unsuccessfully too, upon existing gov dom-in other words, as civilization has advanced, ernments-as there can be no doubt that many ef so has been the improvement of the masses, and forts will for some time be abortive-from the fact, the revolutions of these and other times represent among others, that people must pass through the the volcanic action of the material world; when-initiative of free government, before they can build ever and wherever the resistance has been most up those permanent structures that are properly unyielding, there the violence has been correspond-adjusted and sustained on the only sure foundation, ingly obvious. True wisdom is better displayed that of a rational self-control. The almost unva in giving room to the progress of popular advance, rying effect of revolution from despotic systems. is that the action may be regular and not by convul- to the opposite extreme of popular licence. The sive leaps. It is vain to attempt to arrest it until convulsive effort to cast off oppressive governthe chains of tyrants have all fallen. It may be ments-the popular phrenzy that proceeds, accomhindered for a season, but it will have its free course panies and follows such a state, is inimical to that ultimately. The imperial ukase may exclude the calm and sober sense of individual obligation which lights of learning and civilization, but they shall is so necessary to the success of such liberal ingather so thick, that walls, nor edicts, nor arms, stitutions. The storm that shatters and dismantles shall be sufficient ultimately to prevail. The pro- is adverse to every principle of reconstruction, to gress of invention is the mighty auxiliary that se- beauty and to order. It is, however, but the stor cures and sustains every remove from oppression and my entrance to a peaceful and tranquil sea-one transmits the benefits to other nations promoting that must and will be made. The laws which have an universal freedom. We may almost veuture the regulated power, political science, property, labor, remark, that but for the rapid communications of this are of necessity, by means now at work, to be age, that our own country would have been already modified. Nations heretofore beyond the reach of harassed by many different idioms, which would communication are speedily to be brought nighhave resulted like the confusion of the builders of the circumference of the earth will be shortenedBabel. And can it be doubted, that even in those so that a greater uniformity will exist in the cas countries where such differences of language al toms, the dialects and the destiny of man, which ready exist, that the same causes will not greatly must work an important change in the causes which modify them, as the drop of water wears the stone have marked the decline and fall of empire. upon which it often falls? The shores of our own I have summarily thrown together some of the country are visited every year by thousands of peo- most striking causes which are leading, and much ple of every tongue and nation, and yet in language lead, to important effects in the moral, social, and and in custom they assimilate to the prevailing lan-political conditions of the earth and perhaps to the guage and customs of our own nation. The peo- greater perpetuity of nations.

ple of a particular State coming here in multitudes, connected by common ties, seek in our western hemisphere a common home. Think you, that but for the incessant mixture of our people, with whom they are in hourly intercourse, they would not prefer and preserve in distinct and separate commu. nities their own native peculiarities?

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T. B. R.

A religious hubbub, such as the world has seldom seen. was excited, during the reign of Frederick II., by the imag Our form of Government itself, requiring repre- ined virulence of a book entitled The Three Impostors." sentatives from every State to meet and deliberate It was attributed to Pierre des Vignes, chancellor of the on one common arena, is calculated to complete king, who was accused by the Pope of having treated the that which however is chiefly the result of accele-religions of Moses, Jesus, and Mahomet, as political fables. rated intercourse. This government, representing abused, defended, and familiarly quoted by all parties, The work in question, however, which was squabbled about, such a people, over such a surface of country, well proved never to have existed. would dissolve in its vast extent; and States with

independent and hostile Governments, having dif- land by the name of the Ranz des Vaches. Every cantan There is no particular air known throughout Switzerferent laws, languages, and customs, would even has its own song, varying in words, notes, and even lanby this time have been forming, but for the discov- guage.

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INSTABILITY OF PUBLIC OPINION.

cleanse; in darkening the fountain of others lives, the springs of our own moral being are polluted,— the white robe of life is defiled, and every better aspiration and feeling perishes in the dank and poisonous vapors which overhang us.

The times are so far out of joint that opinion is no longer truth-appearance no longer a reality, and it is almost a miracle that the strong practical and creative intellects of our time-those men who bear the burdens of the world-who think for themselves and others do not rend this factitious veil of society, and throw off the load of narrow prejudice and superannuated folly that blights the treasured dreams and hoarded schemes of a noble ambition. How do the men of influence stand towards their country and countrymen? How are the vast stores of the knowledge of our generation full to overflowing of high thoughts, noble conceptions of deep, solid and substantial wisdom, used? The whole series of political struggles seems like so much laborious trifling-a busy idleness while the real work is left undone. Scarcely for fashionable monstrosities heany man is equal to the effort of grappling with broad fixed principles,

The errors of civilization seem comparative with the unfolding of our progress and advancement, for civilization both degrades and exalts humanity. We take these errors with us into the sanctuary, where selfish piety and spiritual pride become the most fatal of human passions. A neglect to encourage and fasten that large benevolence which teaches that we are all human, shuts out those glimpses of truth which lead us unblinded to the heaven of the human heart.

"Bold in the right and too bold to do wrong."

The distinction between respectable vice and ragged virtue is a pointed illustration of our meaning, and the same rule applied to the struggling efforts of genius is equally apposite. In the giddy, selfish and feverish excitement to satiate a craving

or he

"Who sounds the depths and shoals of honor"

"Who hears the veiled gods walk at night Through the hushed chambers of his listening soul."

A want of confidence in ourselves and others makes us content with partial views and partial statements, leaving the depths of truth unsounded. is elbowed and jostled, as if his body was a walkDoes a man stand forth as a sacrifice to his coun- ing certifieate, that master Snip had not stuck his try-a strong, bold, commanding, and above all a needle in the proper place. consistent and reforming character, the meander- One great drawback to the stability of opinion ings of verbal obliquity seize upon his name and is the fact that physical knowledge is in advance of actions, distort the truth, until dissent, distaste and the thought of the age. Steel-breasted enterprise disgust act upon the sympathies as the cries of meets and combats the silent current of sound opinanimals do towards their species, only signifying ion. The inhabitant of the pure realm of thought that the utterers are violently affected by some sen- is a man among a million, whereas the popular insation or emotion. telligence as displayed in the action of men is turThere is in all conscience a sufficient want of char-bulent and revolutionary, but in thought the wildity in the world-its want is the besetting sin of our est emanations serve a rule and law. To be sure, day and generation, and when we consider the time there is a seed of sovereignty in the barrenness of wasted, the bad passions engendered, we irresistibly unflinching resolution; to this must be ascribed the arrive at the conclusion that we do not sin against earth but against heaven. Our thoughts are not our own, especially if they have harmony and beauty. Nature has endowed such minds with a significance which multiplies itself in others and sheds grace, dignity and feeling over every form of life.

inexplicable constancy of that success for which Sylla would have deified fortune.

Thought is not dependent: it need not follow a fixed path of influence; hence it is the most valuable thing in existence, and if men will but bend all their powers, all that deep and endless strength The avoidance of allusion to the defects of others that inhabits the intellect, they may measure themthen is not only a duty but an advantage, and it is only selves with the mightiest of moral monarchs. in the calm hours of the spirit, when passion is exhaus- It has been said that the child is parent of the man, ted and personal feeling is forgotten, that the mind and this is proportionately true in spirit if not in can be prepared to receive these impressions. And feature; children at a certain age begin to think, as few can be said to wind up the different acts of men at a certain age leave off thinking. Let any the drama they intend to perform, they should in- one form a vigorous habit of thinking on all the dulge at the end of each of these acts, with ap- affairs of life, and although he may generally think plause instead of regret-with the vigor of delight inaccurately and feebly, yet as the great body of instead of the degrading process of cynical expo- men never think at all, his perseverance, even in a sure. The spot upon the hands may be washed scanty method of regulation, will give him a ceraway but the stain upon the mind oceans cannot tain and incalculable superiority-a precedence that

VOL. XIV-48

highest, proudest pleasure of the mind is to see others take warmth from the kindred fire.

Radicalism is perhaps a necessity to the press of this country; the generous sentiments and plastic eloquence, necessary to ensure the attention of men, may run into an extreme, but it should be tempered with the discrimination of the public. Thought "kindling in the fire of kindred thought" leads the willing sense and sympathy astray in her bright and holy footsteps. To the tumultuous heart of care the soothing influence goes; the laborer at his toil is strengthened with the cheering worddiffusing hope to the suffering and oppressed-conveying touching and beautiful reflections upon life and the prospects of man, and opening to the future the ways and means of amelioration.

the half disciplined soldiery of Egypt, though not | journalists are dangerous; writing under the infuto be named with the armies of Europe, possess ence of intense feeling, they hurry the reader into over hordes of the desert. labyrinths of thought, to which the bare approach "Think wrong and welcome," says Lessing, is fatal. In the glow of intellectual production the "but only think" and the maxim is the corner stone of greatness. Reflection is a faculty more than all others improved by exercise, and with it are advanced, in like degree, all the subsidiary qualities of the mind-for the custom of thought generates a habit of thoughtfulness. What is there in this majestic world of ours that is the mind's master? Is it not as Shelley has it, "The measure of the universe?" The power which we give to destiny or fate is mind-the effects of myriads of small minds weighing down the magnitude of a great one. It is this underrating of what fills the world with its truest splendor which more than any thing else tends to disrupt the elements of social life. The physical knowledge of the age runs into vague and visionary reforms without any force of thought comparative to the amount of power that is exerThere is a destiny that surrounds the lot of man cised. The statesman deals in physical and mate- with darkened recollections: it spreads a sombre rial things; the scholar, sage, poet must let their hue over his prospects and aspirations, and he to thoughts run into such channels to maintain influ- whom is given the power to lift the veil and show ence. That philosophic and spiritual presence him a brighter lot, has a lofty inheritance, it is as in thought which gave an elemental grandeur to the Wordsworth says, character of the elder Platonists, and moulded the destinies of Greece, no longer exists in the souls of men. The thought of immortality that enslaves us, emancipated them from thraldom; it was the soothing presence of an exalted truth-while in us it is the ingeniously wrought chain that holds us in mental vassalage through the medium of a physical power.

The obliquity of evil tongues-the fevered alternations of change-the ruinous mistake of reasoning from ourselves in judging the actions of others and in measuring their motives, we recognize as one of the engrossing abuses of our age; it begets an irreverence for character and reputation, which is manifested in an appalling degree. Frequently the most sacred and private relations of life are dragged forth, and while being held up to public scorn are tortured into the most hideous deformity, and he who reigned the pampered idol of public caprice to-day, finds the avenger upon his track to-morrow. So it is in literature and in art; excellence, exalted beyond the reach of envy, is by some unaccountable reaction as suddenly forgotten, though there may be no accession of evil or diminution of good in any point of view.

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a gift

Of aspect most sublime; that blessed mood
In which the burden of the mystery,
In which the heavy and the weary weight
Of all this unintelligible world

Is lightened; that serene and blessed mood,
In which the affections gently lead us on,
Until the breadth of this corporeal frame
And even the motion of our human blood,
Almost suspended, we are laid asleep
In body, and become a living soul.
While with an eye made quiet by the power
Of harmony, and the deep power of joy
We see into the life of things."

Viewed in so strong a light the press necessarily reveals discrepancies in itself and in the public, which may cause it to suffer abatements of power, but it contains the means of correcting its own abuses-it is its own guide, monitor and censor. The grand forms of truth, lying in the recesses of our being, it evokes into living realities. Her gi gantic spirit unfolds itself like the light of day, when morning awakes the world. It is the lip of flame and tongue of fire which exposes the accumulated forms of abuse, and gives the vital contradiction to error and melts it away from the vision

The press more than any thing else, conspires and provokes the heart-burnings and jealousies by of men. which society is so grievously distempered. The Give truth her proper interpretation through the press next to the pulpit has a most august mission press, and political sophistry no longer exists; the to fulfil, and its errors arise as much from a per- pen, "mightier than the sword," hews down the deverted public taste as from that of its conductors,--formed mass, until it crumbles into nothingness bethe error is mutual: a licentious press can only be fore the potency of its spell. The newspaper sustained by a licentious public. Under any cir- press is of all things the great destroyer of intelcumstances, perhaps, a certain class of writers as lect; it is a vanity of reputation to acquire so

ephemeral a fame. It unfits the mind for tranquil | answers the expectations of numbers in which we investigation in the constant draft made upon its excel. resources. It destroys that placid readiness for which men are celebrated, who carry about them the ready coin of wit and genius. The press too must change with the capricious changes of public opinion; all topics, civil, military, political, fiscal and religious, are shaped by its power or dissolved by its individualism. It should be its duty to remind those in power how much they owe to the people, and to show the latter how dependent they are upon its wants and the intellect it sacrifices. Providence seems to grasp at random the men whom it has predestined to represent their generation on earth; it imparts and assigns them the intellectual and physical powers of society-to change the departments of thought and to destroy the idols of error, which sophistry and falsehood have erected.

Place such men any where and they become great. Like those antique coins which wear the ineffaceable impress of some robust commander, they stamp themselves upon the iron surface of the age. This is the inevitable tendency of the press and those who control it in this country; the demand for a strong, bold, and fearless interpretation of events has drawn out and filtered society of its ablest cham

pions.

The press should awaken men to a knowledge of their own worth, and in times of degeneracy, restore their lost nobility; intent upon impartial justice to all; magnificent in its expansion and dominion, directing man to the true aims of life and unfolding the perfection of his progress.

In proportion as a writer has the ability and skill to control the intellects of those around him will his power be felt. In his hand he holds the wand of light, and he must fill the void in his own soul and that of others; he invites them to partake of the delights of peace, of continuous comfort, and with keen and comprehensive sympathies with their sorrows and enjoyments he points out the resting places of memory and hope, and offers them a refuge, in his restless anxieties for the deep and serious interests of the living world. He suffers with those who are suffering; should he hold but discreet, sincere in his convictions-a will firm as adamant; reiterating and accumulating proofs and with

The boundlessness of the power that slumbers in the press, is unknown either by the public or by those engaged upon it, the echo of its mighty voice pierces every household and touches like the circling currents of the viewless air every object in the widest bounds of our nature. It holds in its hands the destinies of the young, and the aged are improved by its suggestions. Among a people so enterprising as we are, there will always be found those who are dissatisfied with the present state of things, and to these the press should address itself; it should strive to reconcile those differences which grow out of the two great classes misunderstanding each other, and while with a firm and steady purpose it sustains the interest of one, it should not deny solace to the grieving but lead them to hope and point out the means of redress. "This is what the press should be," exclaims the reader, but how stands the fact? Is it not too often the great disturber? In politics it surely is, for those who conduct the party organs seem to hold themselves in readiness to devour and be devoured. Do not its conductors, too, unhesitatingly countenance and support by the authority of its transforming and distinctive power the private schemes of politicians? By a fraternizing and confederating pliancy it becomes in turn the passive prey of a ruinous policy, instead of, by warning suggestions, informing and improving the primary conception of true governing principles.

There is a phasis of opinion that is beyond the reach of press or pulpit, which has its origin in wild lusts and tyrannous desires-in bizarre and contorted longings after that which excites and interests. This tumultuous restiveness, having nothing to stay its hunger, seizes upon the defects of others and satisfies the annoyances of wounded ambition by the madness of personality. To stem this impetuous torrent requires a strong arm in the fight and a vigorous thought in council-one of those men who "stand the centre of a whole to many thousands" and are ready and willing to take upon them all the temporary reproach which their impartial justice may foment. When this self dependence is accompanied with a corresponding moral power, it generates all that is grand in action, in plan or purpose, and is the great source of influence. The strong soul setting in the serenity of its sceptered strength holds universal dominion.

"Spirit large as peopled worlds that it would bless," he stirs up with inconceivable influence the purest Calmness in social life is one vital source of founts of feeling and of life. The conductors of stability and permanence. The tranquility of the the press seldom meet with all its obligations; like ocean is the greatest emblem of its strength; the religion, no one should be employed to minister its power that wakes its wrath is extraneous to its deoffices but those who are better and wiser than the structiveness--it is the one vast emblem of the humass; and when one fails to fulfil its exactions, man heart, in whose swift currents glide storms many should be employed to give its duties force. that shake the universe. Every wave that leaps This is the difference between the English press from its legitimate sphere sweeps away some timeand our own, a concentration of talent more than honored evidence of social decay and desolation,

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