generous patriotism, they must truckle to the selfish dicta of cliques and sectional regencies. "We have made you," say the Sovereign People, "and not you, yourselves; you were strangers and we took ye in," render back then that fealty which is the duty of loving vassals. True to this allegiance, our political leaders "keep themselves before the people," and with the most supple elasticity of principle, conform to every phase of opinion and pander to every caprice of popular lust. The bed of Procrustes would be of no inconvenience to a political leader; he is long or short, broad or narrow, by the most electric transitions, just as the Sovereign People may require. He feeds their hungry ambitions with flattering promises, and like the giant in Rabelais, who swallowed five Pilgrims, staves and all, in a salad, the people complacently gorge themselves with impossible hopes.

There is still another kind of special patronage which is due. from a successful aspirant to his particular agents; those who have made the bar-room, the stump and the eloquent beer-barrel vocal with his praises and those of his synonym Liberty. These miscreant scene-painters and soups must be rewarded. The presumptuous wren would fain perch upon a crag of the rock which sustains the eagle. Marry sweet wag, when thou art king, let not us that art squires of the night's body, be called thieves of the day's beauty; let us be Diana's foresters, gentlemen of the shade, minions of the moon; being governed as the sea is, by our noble and chaste mistress, the moon, under whose countenance westeal." This is the language of their demands, and ill befall that ungrateful officer who turns a deaf ear to such requests. Is a relation of such complete reciprocity between the governor and the governed, legitimate or safe? Should that time which, from the citizen of a Republic is especially due to a proper service of his country and a watchful study of her interests and laws, be exhausted in the "division of spoils," and the conflicts of party? No. Give us that Governor who stands above the jar and tumult, and like a Tishbite upon the Carmel of our history, not only foretells the danger with an unwavering prophesy, but applies the remedy with an unselfish zeal.

There is a safeguard against these evils. It is in the heart of the American People, which no oppression can fetter and no corruption taint. It is the love of Liberty-of Country. "Reverence, says Carlyle, the divinest in man, springs forth always from an envelopment of fear," and however much the love of country may be forgotten in the heat of party contests, it springs into phrenzy at the approach of peril. The memory too of our struggle for independence still hovers about us, and like a solemn Mentor, warns us against civil animosities or disunion. We have no faith in those timid alarmists who cry war, war, when all is peace. In the hot debate and the seeming clash of interests, high-mettled sectional enthusiasts may hurl forth threats of disunion, but there is yet a neutral ground which is common, which is hallowed. Sherman

and Rutledge, the North and South, were equally active in exciting and equally zealous in prosecuting that struggle which secured us our liberties, and now we see a Webster and a Calhoun, able and honest, in the more civil capacity of preserving the Constitution which is their continual guaranty. These historic standpoints are seldom undermined. The present is ever jealously reverent of the past. The only real danger which we can detect in the further extension of our territory, arises from the fact that it invites immigration, and may also incorporate with our union opinions which are foreign, and people who have not a common antiquity with our confederation. We see a surety of continued harmony in the difference of habit and temperament between our Northern and Southern population. The one is a supplement to the other.

There is moreover a conservative feature in our government, which resists all danger from individual discontent. The civil wais of England and the French Revolution, would not have resulted as they did, but for the master-influence of individual actors. Here the individual is not exhalted above the mass. A man is only great by means of his constituency in the whole. The vis inertiae of the mass is fatal to single minds, ambitious for extraordinary ends. No single mind, no association of minds adhering to singular opinions, can obtain permanent sway. A sort of popu lar egotism is startled which resists the innovation. Thus our country stands in no hazard from those sudden convulsions which have torn other countries, when a crazed and riotous populace have seconded the ambition of some master-rebel. Resistance to the government is fatal to the governed.

We have now given a hasty but honest glance at the political condition of our country, and there remains another standard by which to measure it-that of mind. This is above all others the true gauge of national greatness. Broad lands and boundless treasures are elements of a nation's greatness, only so far as they favor the development of its mind; for the end of every human compact is to adapt mankind for the fruition of that perfect government whose author is God.

Great hopes have been entertained that America would be the seat of new and wonderful developements in mind. Its scenery of mingled grandeur and beauty; its wild contrasts of mountain and of wold; its awful cataracts and broad lakes;-all storied in the Mythology of a romantic though barbarous people-were expected to arouse strange energies in thought. Such expectations have not been realized to a full degree, and our own vanity suggests that we are in the youth of great things, while foreign rivalry proclaims that American genius has already reached its highest flight. A careful study of our history and character we think will show that neither are correct. We have before remarked that our country was founded by men of established character and opinion. Such are indeed the men who lay broad and deep the foundations of empire, but they are not of those who endow a nation's history

with that various and stormy action which prompts the highest efforts of mind. Our history is a record of privations and manful struggles against an inclement fortune, rather than of venturous exploits. None but sterling characteristics were displayed, and the eye of Genius saw but few phases of the human heart. When trammeled by the stubborn systems of a regular life, Genius dares not to picture its strangest visions and loses its "lust of power." Humanity only in its wild and riotous excesses stirs it to bold and eccentric effort. Thus the greatest Poets, Orators, Painters and Sculptors have arisen in the infancy of their arts. Homer, Chaucer, Spenser, Shakspeare and Dante-Raphael, Titian, Michael Angelo-the Greek Sculptors and Tragedians--all lived in the beginning of their arts, and carried them almost to their highest perfection. The age has passed away, therefore, when we might have looked for those "Titans of the soul" who scale its highest heaven.

There is yet a special excellence for which American mind may aim with a certainty of success. It is that of becoming a coworker with our republican government, of informing public opinion, which is at once the motive and governing power of our institutions. "Invent writing, Democracy is inevitable. Writing brings Printing-universal, every day, extempore Printing-as we see at present. Whoever can speak, speaking now to the whole nation, becomes a power, a branch of government, with inalienable weight in law-making, in all acts of authority. It matters not what rank he has, what revenues or garnitures; the requisite thing is that he have a tongue which others will listen to; this and nothing more is requisite. The nation is governed by all that has tongue in the nation. Democracy is virtually there."* A literature which will have a tongue wherewith to reach the nations heart, and convert it from a worship of the simulacra to a true and lively reverence for the reality of Democracy, is what we have cause to expect. Our physical resources and our literature will then be the twin and inseparable pillars of a great and permanent Republic. We shall then have no need of song or story to commemorate our name; it will live with the life of nations, either as a distinct existence or as a mighty leaven to raise and purify the human race.

Let us consider, for a moment, the tendencies to such a consummation. The peculiarities of its government must stamp themselves, in a degree, upon a nations mind. Law embodies its rules of action, Literature its rules of thought, and each is representative of a phase of its public opinion. Our political institutions must, therefore, have a connection with our literature, and a proportionate influence upon it. What is this influence? It nurses freedom of thought. Bnt the mind cannot be enslaved; it will make itself wings" wherewith to overfly the narrow circus of its dungeon walls." This is not true. Look at the slave, the timid crouching slave; why does he not break his bonds? Is it because they are too strong

•Carlyle.

for him; or has the long habit of bodily slavery made his mind servile? The same influence, although in a qualified degree, acts upon those who live under monarchical forms of government. Does the Russian serf (although he be as is sometimes the case, a millionaire) think for himself? No. His soul is dragged down to share the slavery of his body. We may still farther illustrate the blessings which free institutions confer upon mind, by contrasting their influence with that of the less liberal government of England.

This is best shown by the rarity of instances we find in England, of men rising from very low estate to royalty in mind. England can boast, it is true, some such deathless names. Keats from his Gallipots, and still later Prince, from the very Alms house, both have found a tongue with which to utter the language of a strange and mysterious poesy. Other, and perhaps brighter exceptions might be cited; but here it would seem as if genius had gone mostly to the way-places and hedges, and forced the lowly to join its bridal company. The oysterman at his barrow, the carman at his dray, the smith at his anvil, the plowman in the field, equally with the highest in the land,-all feel that they are free, all know that they may be anything but gods. Among the best in our Senate, and the brightest in our letters, are those who have toiled their way up to greatness, who have learned

How sublime a thing it is

To suffer and be strong.

These men have become great, not so much from the facilities for a common knowledge, which our systems of education afford, as from the self-reliance which a sense of freedom confers. The moment you make a man politically equal to his fellow, you give him a consciousness that he is so in all respects. This is the source of confidence. And how many, from a want of this royal egotism, have smothered thoughts of fire, and died victims to their own unsatisfied yearnings. Confidence rolls the stone from the sepulchre and liberates the imprisoned Deity of mind. Upon this confidence, which every American feels, backed by freedom of opinion and community of knowledge, both of which are the gift of our institutions, we may rely for a literature-a national literature, not confined to a few vast minds, intellectual Pyramids which enshrine the "Great Thought" of a nation, but a literature which shall be equally the offspring and property of our whole population.

VERSES SUGGESTED BY THE DEATH OF AN INDIAN CHILD ON THE WESTERN CARS.