less unembarrassed, than it would have been with a larger infusion of the poetic and imaginative. The well-educated Englishman throws off his words carelessly and yet gracefully, with that inimitable air of unconcern, which bespeaks and grows out of a consciousness that he is in no danger of barbarism or inelegance. He is using an idiom, of which the most perfect forms are familiar and his own. Scottish writers have acknowledged their want of this advantage. Why should Americans refuse to follow their example? Fettered by the peculiarities which our language has acquired under the various influences by which it has been controlled, yet endeavoring to cultivate an easy and unconstrained manner, we are in danger of betraying either effort or inelegance. There may be something, on the one side, like translation, in which the writer seeks to reconcile the differences of two languages, or, on the other, a disregard of models and rules, which renders composition unclassical and unharmonious. Far be it from me to intimate by these remarks that the literary merits of America are small. There are those living and dead, familiar to our memories as household words, whose speeches, whose sermons, and whose essays, are imperishable monuments of their age, identified, we trust, with the glory and the duration of the language. But such men are the last to claim perfection. They are the first to encourage improvement. And they feel more than ourselves that the time has not passed for making the detection of deficiences one among the first steps in the progress of improvement.

Should an apology be asked for so long a discourse on the mere forms of language, I have only to answer, that, in my opinion, words and things which so many at this day carefully distinguish, paying all due homage, as they imagine, to the latter, and sneering, or at least civilly leering, at the former, are so connected on all points touching the growth of mind that you cannot separate them. If, as we are taught, words without things are shadows, it is equally true that things without words, although they may claim the dignity of substances, are yet substances just as spirits are in fable; you can see them, but they will not be touched. To speak without figure, they lie out of the whole sphere of reasoning and communication. We can come at no great general truth without words; without words we certainly cannot impart our convictions or feelings to others. We

may add, that, as the habits and reasonings of men do much to impart its character to language, so the influence is reciprocal; language, as the inspirer and the interpreter of thought, being equally powerful to impress its image on society. Let every scholar remember that he owes it to his country to aid, as far as he can, in making its already noble language a more perfect agent for the excitement and the healthful action of its intellectual and moral energies.

Let me ask indulgence while I present one other train of thought. America has unrivalled advantages for cultivating what may be called a literature of the moral feelings-a literature which shall present religion and virtue pure and undefiled, gushing forth unbidden from the heart, and spreading, through all departments of knowledge and of thoughts, a holy and ennobling influence. The literature of Greece and Rome may be characterized as the heroic; that of some portions of the middle ages, as the romantic; that of later ages has been divided between heroism, romance and love. Sterne gave us a literature of mawkish sentimentalism, and Byron has furnished that of dark and gloomy passion. Let ours assume a nobler character, Christianity diffusing through the whole its own holy and free spirit. Were it that every other department of mind had been foreclosed, this is not. It is still open. It is still inviting gifted minds to enter, and to present to the world a new unfolding of the powers-a phasis, so to speak, of genius, as widely differing from what it has usually exhibited, as the most dissimilar aspects which the human intellect can assume. The oriental mind and the western are not more completely severed. And yet this literature is not confined in its range. It cannot be; for the spirit which fills it is infinite. Religion is the science of the universe, the interpretation of boundless and endless mysteries. Those mysteries are every where,—about us—within us-in heaven on earth-in the history of the world-in the philosophy of nature and the soul, in the researches of reason in the fervor of passion-in the visions of poetry. A literature so pure, so spiritual, so like an inspiration from God, may select its subject wherever it will. So likewise it may take what shapes of language it shall choose. It may breathe a lofty enthusiasm ; it may win the heart by calm beauty; it may subdue by strength, or awe and soothe by chastened grandeur. It may combine precision of argument with living and fervid imagery, and impregnate the depths of

philosophy with the energies of intense emotion. Thus infusing its own spirit, to what new dignity will it raise language itself, connecting it by those associations which words always suggest beyond what meets the ear, as well as by the truth which it distinctly utters, with whatever is great and mysterious in our spiritual being, and our relations to the unseen and eternal! Nay, more; it would become a powerful agent of heaven to draw forth our moral nature from the mass of worldliness which too often surrounds, and presses it down, and to lead it onward in freedom and excellence, strengthening its union with God, and deepening its consciousness of immortality.

ARTICLE IV.

DECLARATION OF AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE.

FREE discussion is the privilege and the security of freemen. Light is the element of liberty, and it is only by the vibrations of its medium, according to the theory of modern philosophers, that light can be diffused. Principles and opinions need continually to be discussed, in order that the wheat may be separated from the chaff. This remark is so true, and its application is thought to have become so much a habit in this country, that it may be deemed trifling to repeat it. It is true indeed, that there is discussion enough, and discussion too abundantly reckless and free. But it is also true that its direction often lies not in the same plane with the truth, and endless error is consequently its only result. To say nothing of the fiery ordeal to which character is subjected in this age of personality, when, to use a bold figure of Coleridge, the meanest insects are worshipped with a sort of Egyptian superstition, if only the brainless head be atoned for by the sting of personal malignity in the tail, in most of which cases the very object is not so much the

exposure of a villain, as the discomfiture of an enemy, the discussion of the merest abstract principles, in which truth alone must be the end, is often rendered perplexed and unsatisfactory, and the mind, struck off from the direction of truth, is lost in "error infinite."

"The error of the eye directs the mind;
What error leads must err."

Discussion leads to truth, only when the fundamental principles, the received axioms, are true. A true conclusion from a false premise is impossible. While then there is much discussion of characters and measures and practical opinions, there is little investigation of principles, and the consequence has been, in many cases, the more discussion, the more confusion. The agitation of the waters, while it has not purified the atmosphere, has cast up mire and dirt, and while no principle has been rendered certain, nor practical conclusion established, mutual accusation and recrimination have been the only result. This has been emphatically true in most of the disputes between the friends and the enemies of African colonization. This confusion has resulted from the unquestioning admission of certain principles, which have passed into the mass of received truths, and which it has been presumed, no man of a sound head, or a good heart, will call in question. Our reverence for these principles, and our attachment to them, is the natural consequence of the expense and hazard at which they have been asserted and maintained. Long and grievous was the bondage of mankind in the Egypt of political oppression. For ages of darkness and hopeless wo, the cry of suffering humanity ascended to heaven. Bitter even now to the chosen people, that has been delivered from the house of bondage, is the remembrance of the toils, the stripes, and strawless bricks. Dreary too has been the passage through the wilderness, and grateful, inexpressibly grateful to the worn and weary pilgrims, is the distant view of Canaan. How natural then it is, that they should look with reverence upon the beacons, that have guided them, as heavendescended pillars of cloud and fire; should discard all the ordinary precautions of scouts and advanced guards, and follow with implicit confidence, the motions of their heavenly guides. And such is in fact the reverence, which is felt by every freeman, for the "great title-deeds of liberty," the

Magna Charta, the Petition of Right, the Bill of Rights of 1668, and the Declaration of American Independence. Runnymede is a spot dear to every Englishman, and the fourth of July can never return unwelcomed by the freemen of America. Nor are the emotions with which freemen regard these instruments only those of general and blind reverence. Their feelings are not those of superstitious, but of religious regard; built not on ignorance, but on knowledge and faith. They reverence these charters, not as the ignorant Catholic does his Vulgate, because they are the mysterious talismanic seal of their liberties, but because they understand their principles, and believe them. The key of knowledge is not here taken away from the people; these testaments are in lingua vernacula, the people can read them; their principles are plain, the people can understand them; the benefits of which they are the seal are real and palpable, the people can enjoy and appreciate them. It is for this reason that they reverence them, and receive their principles either as self-evident truths, or as propositions made absolutely certain by the demonstration of actual experiment. And not only are the principles, which bear the image and superscription of these instruments, a lawful tender in the senate and forum; but they are the actual current coin of society. They are the circulating medium. Every body receives them; no one questions their currency. The influence of the doctrines of the declaration is felt in every village and hamlet, not of this country only, but of Christendom. They pervade the public sentiment of the civilized world. Like definitions in geometry and natural science, they modify, nay they determine all the deductions of political logic, and impart their hue to every scheme of policy. Their illimitable power cannot be resisted. In the cabals of intriguers, and the manœuvres of political knaves, they may indeed be evaded, and the dust of sophistry thrown in the eyes of the unreasoning multitude to hide the fraud; but direct and open violation of them, no "tint of words" can color with favor, or "metaphysic wit" justify to the people. There are landmarks of political right which may not with impunity be transcended or removed. The despotic demagogue, even at the moment when the iron of his tyrannous policy is entering their souls, must still echo the cry of the arch-hypocrite Robespierre, "les pauvres peuples," "les pauvres peuples"! and mingle the bitter cup of wrath,