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of the country, may be summed up in this one-to escape oppression. It was so with the Puritans, with the Huguenots, and with the Roman Catholics of Maryland; and we be lieve it may safely be said of all, that the desire of a larger liberty and of a fairer field, influenced them to try their fortunes in the wilderness. To escape control in the church and the state, to vindicate the rights of conscience, and so to secure personal liberty, was the deep-rooted principle working secretly beneath, though it manifested itself under the most diverse forms. There were, at the first, many other elements mingled with this, of a more conservative and even aristocratical character, which retarded its developements, and tempered its workings; but we much mistake if, from the beginning, this was not the differentia of our character and institutions, full of hidden life and power. Hence in due time came the breaking of our colonial bonds in the war of the Revolution; and hence that movement continually gaining ground, though resisted in the beginning by the sages and patriots of our land, seeks to destroy all exclusive privileges, and, of course, all corporations and organized bodies, and to individualize and equalize to the very uttermost. Our boast is that we have freedom, as no other nation has it. Liberty and equality are our watchwords. The peculiarity of our institutions is, that they proclaim and defend the integrity of man as a person, and do not suffer him to be absorbed into the mass and crushed there, as in the old world. But for that very reason they are deficient in constructive power. The individualizing principle is purely negative, seeking to remove restrictions, to break down superiority, and to place all men upon the same level of privileges. It is good, therefore, to destroy old and worn-out organizations, but it can not organize anew. It re

duces all things to their simplest elements, but can not recompose them. It concerns itself not with men, but with man, with humanity in the abstract, in puris naturalibus—stark naked. It recognizes that in all men which is alike, not that which dif fers; and deals not with the father, the child, the husband, the wife, but with the human being. If this be the overmastering tendency, the lez non scripta, of our land, our progress is not towards unity. We need to do more than teach every man his standing as a man, and se. cure for him his freedom and per sonal rights; otherwise, the multitudes hastening hither from other lands, that mistake lawlessness for liberty, will not learn from us a lesson of submission to order. It is not enough to knock off the old cement, and lay every stone by itself; they must be arranged and com. pacted anew in the stately structure of society. It is not enough to loosen all false and galling bonds, if we strengthen not those eternally ordained of God. The truth seems, therefore, to be divided between those parties now contending about the respective rights of natives and foreigners. Those who desire to see foreign elements less active and influential in the state, best understand the ideal of a nation; while those who would obliterate all national differences, discern most clearly the spirit of the age, and act most in harmony with the law of our progress hitherto. It is, indeed, a monstrous doctrine, that there is nothing peculiarly sacred in a birthright, and that all the rights and privileges of citizenship should be thrown open, like an unfenced common, which every hoof treads down; but it is quite too late to resist it The ideal is not practicable, and the practicable is far enough from be ing the true ideal; but all that is left us is to mould, as best we can, the alien materials that can never be excluded.

A third means of securing national unity, is by a well defined and permanent territory. By this we mean, that the nation should have fixed habitations, and within moder ate limits, inasmuch as an overgrown territory and frequent changes of abode, are both unfavorable to the cementing of strong attachments amongst the people. The soil upon which a nation is planted, and in the absolute ownership of which its independence stands, becomes almost identified with it. There the life of the nation has unfolded itself, and made it the theater of the national labors, enterprises, and glories. Places become memorials of high exploits, links of union with the past, and incentives to noble deeds in all coming time. The peasant who crosses the field where Wallace conquered, the scholar who makes his pilgrimage to the house where Shakspeare was born, and the Christian who treads reverently in a ruined abbey where a holy choir ages ago chaunted the praises of God, each feels an influence reaching from the dead, and consecrating the soil on which he stands. Every spot becomes associated with memorable events, and acquires an intellectual and moral significancy. The dead earth is quickened with life, and vocal with melodies floating from mountain and lake and river, which speak to the hearts of men. How must they feel knit to each other, who look with a common joy or sorrow over their native land, bearing engraven upon its face the story of their nation's greatness or of its wrongs.

Let us imagine the English nation to be removed in a body, queen, nobles and people, to some one of their possessions in the southern sea; would not the result show not merely that English character, in its finer features, is indissolubly connected with English soil, but also that the bands which have bound them in so marvellous a unity, had

been loosened, if not broken, by the shock? They could scarcely be separated from their island-home with its rocky cliffs and resounding shores, from the Thames and the Severn, from the land which Alfred and Elizabeth governed, and which martyrs watered with their blood, without the entire breaking up of their social structure. No doubt the old Saxon energy would bring forth some noble fruit again, but England would never reappear. That form of national life which has been gradually developing itself for ages within the narrow mould of the British isle, would never bear transplanting.

We believe that smallness of territory has much to do with the strength of national attachments. Concentration gives intensity. The life of the nation rolls back upon itself, and becomes fixed and deepened. As with the circles in the pool, which ever widening, do at last so spread themselves abroad, as to be blended with the watery mass and disappear, so is it with the enlargement of territory as bearing on national character. All sense of mutual connection, all unity of feeling and aim, is gradually lost; and you have a collection of neighborhoods, instead of a country. The evil is of course aggravated, if this enlargement of national boundaries brings in foreign races. It would be an evil, even if the population remained homogeneous; it is incalculably increased, when alien elements are thus introduced into the body politic.

The course of things amongst ourselves in this respect, is of portentous aspect. The annexation of Texas, as affecting our nationality, was bad enough; but the annexa. tion of Mexico would well nigh destroy it. There would be more policy in holding that country as a conquered province, than in admitting it to an equality of political privileges. Such heterogeneous elements

can never combine. It is madness to think of comprehending in one country all that lies between the two oceans, and of bringing the whole of North America within the federal union. Far better than this, had the western base of the Alleghanies been washed by the waves of the Pacific. The spirit that desires such an enlargement of our territory, is not patriotism, but the lust of pow. er, such as stirred up the French Jacobins to their frenzied crusade against all the ancient governments of Europe, that they might establish one vast republic on the ruins. The prospect is that as a nation, we shall soon have forsaken our ancient seats. The only part of our territory which has any strong historical interest, is the Atlantic states, the old thirteen. There the seeds of our national life were first plant ed, there were our birth-struggles, there the new-born nation first saw the light. But we are fast remov. ing from them, and in a few years they will have been deserted by a numerical majority of the people. That which is now going on, is virtually a national emigration, for it is more than an enlargement of the extremities, the centre remaining the same; power is going also; and soon the nation will be found removed from the battle-grounds of their fathers, from the soil rich in glorious recollections, from the only links of union with the past, far away upon the prairies of the west, or the plains of Texas, with as lit tle to remind them of the land from whence they sprung, as there is on the level ocean.

A fourth means of national unity lies in oneness of religious faith and worship. The spiritual life of a people is their truest, innermost life; and unity here is the true source of unity in all the outward spheres of their existence. From this central fountain flow forth the strongest influences to control and mould the whole being of man. For

good or for evil, faith in unseen things and supernatural powers, has been the most active and the most mighty of all the agencies that have ever been working at the heart of society. The vast overshadowing systems of Pagan idolatry, which were indissolubly linked in with all the institutions of the state, and the history of Mahommedanism, which burst like a whirlwind upon the eastern world, but like the whirlwind did not pass away, show how political institutions have been shaped by religious principles. And so it must be. The earthly and fleeting elements of man's life are connected with an encompassing eter nity, and must be influenced by that which is higher and more enduring. No one can deny the power of faith (the sphere of which is super-terrestrial) in matters of which govern. ments take cognizance. It made the Jew intractable and rebellious under the dominion of Rome; it set the early Christians, meek and gentle though they were, in stern resistance to the idolatrous laws of the empire; and, in every age, it has introduced a new and difficult element into political affairs. Where men differ fundamentally on that highest of all questions, they can not be one in the deepest unity of a national life. How much have differences in faith disturbed and vexed the world! What strifes and commotions have they kindled! And even where hostile parties have proceeded to no such extremities of violence, yet there can not be that inward union, that flowing together of affections, that acknowledged community of interests, which are essential to the highest perfection of a nation.

As the spiritual in man, when awakened, is the controlling part of his being, so Christianity has always exerted a mighty influence on the external life of nations. Unity in the church would both act as a harmonizing principle, and serve as a

astical bodies, growing out of the agitation of a great moral and politi

slavery forebodes a more complete alienation of affection, a more radical loosening of common ties, between different sections of our union, than has yet been; and it needs no sagacity to foretell that, if the bonds of a common Christianity are broken, none other will long be strong enough to hold us together.*

model for the institutions of the state. A spiritual and ecclesiastical union would prepare the way for a political question-that touching domestic cal union. It was most happy for Europe, that, at the time its institutions were slowly forming, after the dissolution of the Roman Empire, the church was not broken up into conflicting sects, but had, to a great extent, united, both in government and in doctrine. When society was in a chaotic state, the ecclesiastical element was all that was stable, and it formed a barrier against the breakings of anarchy, and kept the principle and the example of order before the eyes of that lawless time. learned to go up to one altar in their holy worship, and to be subject to one system of spiritual discipline, before they were brought together into the unity of the state.

Men

And as

the church was the nucleus around which European society crystallized, so, when it is broken up into factions, and the spiritual life of the people is decomposed and dissipated, we see a sure forerunner of political ruptures and dissolution. The real weakness of England, (under the appearance of amazing strength,) and her chief difficulties of administration, grew out of her fierce religious quarrels. Ireland and the education question supply proofs enough of this.

In this means of national unity we are deficient. Our land is a sort of battle-ground, where all faiths are meeting in mortal conflict. The church neither exemplifies the law, nor conveys the influences of unity; but her divisions introduce an element of discord into the state, and hinder the close cementing of the people in the bonds of a common life. The great religious denominations of our country are cracking and crumbling more and more, and these inner spiritual dissensions necessarily propagate themselves in the outer circles of social and political feelings and interests. The schism in one of the largest ecclesi

In fine, this is our ideal of a nation. That it should have a central power, as the symbol and organ of the national life, to which all the parts should be subordinated, and around which the national affections should cluster; that it should increase mainly from itself by the natural law of growth, and thus secure the inestimable benefits of a common ancestry, and a common language; that it should occupy the same country, from age to age, with ever-strengthening local attachments; and that, through oneness in faith and worship, it should have one spiritual life, as the true source and sustaining strength of all outward unity.

Great as our shortcomings may be, when tried by this ideal, we have most hopeful feelings as to our ultimate destiny. The position assigned us, in the grand scheme of Providence, seems to forbid, for the present, the perfection of a national constitution. Our work has been to subdue the wilderness, and to people it with teeming life. Year by year the abodes of civilization are moving swiftly towards the Pacific; and the pioneers are already scaling the summits of the Rocky Mountains, or winding their way through its defiles towards the vallies of the Columbia. We are strewing the continent with materials to be worked up hereafter. But the lower forms of national existence

Catholic, nor an Episcopalian, he can not

* As the writer is neither a Roman

be suspected of any party aims in the expression of the foregoing views.

will not always satisfy us. Already do we see a longing for a higher unity in those schemes of association which are becoming so rifeschemes unsound in principle, and utterly impracticable-but growing out of a feeling of desolateness, a sense of isolation. So loose are the ties which now bind men together. We have been seeking to build a solar system with the centrifugal force alone. We need, and the need is beginning to be felt, another power that shall draw men towards a common center, and make them to move in harmonious orbs around it. The peculiarity of our institutions has lain too much in leaving men to themselves, in giving them the lar

gest liberty, in letting the glowing" metal run at its own wild will, and form itself into ragged and unsightly shapes. But a change will comenot, perhaps, till the evil has reached its consummation, the storm passed over the face of the land, and the shock of the earthquake opened the abyss beneath our feet. For the present seems to be the time throughout all lands, of the breaking up of the old foundations, and of the overflowing of the old landmarks. But the storm shall cease, and the floods abate, and the hills and the green earth appear; and then shall the glorious destiny be accomplished for which we are reserved in the plans of an all-comprehending Providence.

MODERN FRENCH LITERATURE.*

THIS is a useful and seasonable volume. It originated in a sugges tion of William and Robert Chambers, of Edinburgh, who have of late done so much for a really popular literature in Great Britain. These publishers were persuaded, that "this full account of the respectable literature of France, drawn up from an extensive and minute knowledge of the subject, might help to promote a good understand ing between France and England." M. de Véricour, who is a mem. ber of the Archæological Society of Rome, and the Historical Institute of France, was formerly a professor at the Royal Athenæum in Paris. He has resided several years in England, and written an Essay on Milton and Epic Poetry, which was

* Modern French Literature. By L. Raymond de Véricour, formerly Lecturer in the Royal Athenæum, Paris, &c. &c. Revised, with notes alluding particularly to writers prominent in late political events in Paris; by William Staughton Chase, A.M. Boston: Gould, Kendall & Lincoln, 1848. 12mo, pp. 448.

well received by the leading British reviews. In his preface, the anthor expresses the conviction, "that the English public is liable to be misled, with regard to French liter. ature, by the injustice of a partial, capricious fame, and by the venality of the public press." He adds, that it is his belief, that the estimate of French literature current among the better classes in England, is unjust to the best writers of France, and that these classes are in a great degree ignorant of the higher and bet ter tone which French literature has assumed, in connection with the ve ry great change for the better which the French people have experienced during the present century. To correct this mistaken and unjust judgment, by introducing to the ac quaintance of his readers the better writers who have appeared in France since her first revolution, and by ap prising them of the improved state of thought and feeling of which their works are at once the cause and the effect, is the design of this volume. It is difficult to predict whether

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