son, are in their lifetime commonly hated by you, rich and busy traffickers. You have not time to stop and see into the character of such a man as the people have. You are in too great haste to be rich at the expense of the people, and he, or such as he, put stumbling-blocks in your way, by "removing the deposits" from your "United States Banks," or setting up "Sub-Treasuries" wherein the people's money may be kept for the people's uses, instead of Mr. Biddle's and the "financiers." But, lo you! when he is dead, when he has had "quiet consummation," and "malice domestic" can not harm him farther, how you renown his grave. It becomes one of your Meccas. You make pilgrimages to it. You applaud his virtues to the echo. You would even give five dollars to raise a monument to him, so liberal is your late-learned_admiration. What! have you forgotten, Dives, that he was a Democrat, a very Titan of Democracy, scaling the heaven of your exclusive privileges, and pulling its Jupiter from his marble olympus in Chestnut street? Have you forgotten "Perish credit, perish commerce," but let the Republic live pure and undefiled: the great principles of man's eternal rights live on immortal? Come, those times are worth thinking of. It is worth your while, too, to inquire curiously how you came to miss the light which was in them, and never see it till its aureole hung above the quiet grave at the Hermitage! You missed it by being poor politi

cians.

To be a good one, it needs that you should love your fellowman, and have a little respect to the golden rule of Him who gave the charge, "Little children, love one another." To be a good one, it needs that you should be interested in the political movements of the day for some great object, some purpose sanctified by principle, and not "to be stirred in without great argu

ment.'

The time we live in, the country we inhabit, the duties we owe her, the complications, foreign and domestic, in which the turn of the die may involve her, call for activity of thought and action. He who sits down by the way-side to-day to enjoy life as an amusement, and drink his wine and gossip pleasantly of the gracefulness of life, may be disagreeably aroused from his day-dream by the tramp and noise of the great crowd, surging past him on the march, under new leaders, and rushing to possess the world in the intoxication of new ideas of victories to be achieved over all established principles of human association. Who knows? Do you, great man? Do you, dallier by the way-side? Do you, whose desire is to be let alone

in the enjoyment of your pleasant things-who knows how far the mine has penetrated beneath the soil whereon ye walk? Have you read the signs of the times, or are they more occult than the symbolism of the Pyramids to you? You flatter yourself that all this will last your day. That you shall walk securely till the last scene of all closes your peaceful history of enjoyment, and six feet of that earth, a little mine of your own, is all you need to lie in. But there is a secret mine there, and mystery is still reverend to the vulgar eye. Do you doubt it? How else could the vulgar mystery and clap-trap of KnowNothingism have deluded so many honest men? Has it not appealed to that prurient craving after the secret, the mysterious which is a law of man's being? And on this mine you have walked placidly. You have never looked beyond the hour; you have never worked into the heart of this mystery. It has been to your thinking only a machine for changing men, for turning out one set of public office-holders and putting in another. But you have never thought how it was sapping the foundations, and drinking the life-blood of that old Saxon frankness, the generous boldness of action and of thought which has made us the conquering and absorbing race in the modern world. You have never paused to reflect how nearly allied to each other the stern virtues of the old Roman stock of Bruti and Gracchi, and the stock of American virtues were. It is worth the trouble of a pause, nevertheless. It is worth while comparing the character of different races and peoples, to see what the effect upon the one hand of openness, bravery, frankness, decision of character, determination to declare, in Heaven's face and all men's sight, principle and purpose, and fight an enemy with open manly steel-foot to foot-eye to eye-in the broad daylight-live or die for it; and on the other of treachery, deceit, manoeuvering, plotting, midnight skulking, oaths of secresy, distrust, conspiracy; the stealthy step creepingghost-like to its design; the assassin's dagger, the coward's life of faith alone in all men's villany as he knows his own! The first will go to make up the character of a Democrat; the last a Know-Nothing.

Dii avertite omen! Is it not time that every man was a politician? And now, indeed, when every other party has pandered to the hideous lust of these night-prowling defilers of their country's name-is it not time that every man should ask himself, why is this? what virtue is there in this principle of Democracy which keeps it unspotted from the taint? Is it not time that every true man should be a Democrat?

The abstract and the concrete are governed by the same rule. Apply it, then. How many-how, indeed, do all pretend to admire the beauty and perfection of our institutions. With what unction they describe the sweetness of their fruit! How they prate of civil and religious freedom-your rankest KnowNothing the loudest mouther! And, lo you! whilst they are exhibiting it with the simulated glow of patriotic pride, and telling you how here first in the history of man it has been permitted to ripen fully for "the healing of the nations," they are laying deep plans to steal that glorious fruit, smuggle it away into a Know-Nothing lodge-room, and serve it up to a select and virtuous party of the friends of Mr. Senator Seward. Generous and immaculate conservators of the Constitution; felicitous exponents of liberty of conscience; patriotic admirers of the virtues of our misguided ancestors, who spread their table, and invited the oppressed of every clime to come and eat that delicate and luscious fruit of freedom; pious defenders of the faith once delivered to Americans by the mouths of her Republican prophets, by Jefferson, and Madison, and Jackson -how shall we find words to magnify your services to your country? Shall we not pull down the Washington Monument; preach a crusade against all Dutchmen, Irishmen, and others who were such unheard-of villains as to go beyond sea to get themselves born; slaughter them at once, and on the site raise a pyramid of their bones higher than that of Cheops-and crown the whole with a dark lantern? Look you now, this is what you aim at, or you aim at nothing.

So our modern patriots, our wise philosophers, our professors of the science of humanity, our devout believers in political millenniums, and devout skeptics as to the Biblical one, go about to manufacture political microscopes. They direct through them the sunshine of the press. They throw upon the wall monstrous exaggerations of choice atoms, such as the triple crown of the unfortunate gentleman who sleeps upon French bayonets in the Seven-Hilled City; and all to convince the poor dear people that what they have been considering a fine Republican, American fruit, is nothing more than a terrible collection of distorted and pernicious animalcule; that the real fruit has been munched up by Jesuits, and other frightfully wicked persons, and this awful conglomerate left to poison them.

Is it not monstrous that such inconceivable lies should find men stupid enough to believe them? But they do; they have done so ever since the days of Guy Fawkes, and Sir Edmonsbury Godfrey. Now you, who are playing the lookers-on here

in America, is it not time that you asked a few sensible questions about these political combinations? Suppose you take the trouble to inquire what has the Democratic party of the Union done to forfeit its character? Is this new system, which proposes to take its business out of its hands, and give it to a mongrel and hybrid aggregation of Whiggery, Black-Republicanism, and Exeter-Hall philanthropy, all paired, not matched, in the precious union of Know-Nothingism, a true system? Is it good philosophy? Is it true political science? Does it tend to promote the moral health and digestion of the people? Or is it not rather a miserable empiricism and bare-faced charlatanry? Ah! you are too comfortable to be a politician, perhaps. You care for none of these things. For your time ambles withal. These questions, you say, shrugging your shoulders, will find their solution without us as soon as with us. Don't disturb us. We are very comfortable as we are. Let us alone. Not so, gentlemen. We commiserate you; but we must disturb you. If you will not listen to Thomas Jefferson or Andrew Jackson, hear at least a good Whig; accept a word from Daniel Webster: "We are not to wait till great public mischiefs come; till the government is overthrown; or liberty itself put in extreme jeopardy. We should not be worthy sons of our fathers, were we so to regard great questions affecting the general freedom." Does not that teach the lesson, that in every thing which affects any, all should be interested? that for the rights of all, all should watch, and work, and pray?

The price of liberty is not only eternal vigilance; it is eternal activity also. It is not enough to know truth, or foresee danger. It is necessary to act the one, and to confront the other.

It is our province to support a party, and discuss political 'issues; but we do so because it is the solemn conviction of our reason and our hearts that the Democratic party is worthy of all good men's support, and the issues which it makes with all other parties such as will bear the nicest scrutiny, and come out the more strongly fortified and built up in their integrity by the widest latitude of discussion.

The question of the administration of the Federal Government is already before the country. Not many months, and it will be decided upon what principles that government shall be conducted for the ensuing four years. Already Know-Nothingism, Abolitionism, Black-Republicanism, and all their intermediate shades and types of dangerous heresies, are beginning to stir the passions, and attempt to warp the judgments of the

people. Should either succeed to power, farewell to the greatness-farewell to the happiness of America.

Shall these poisonous shoots be grafted upon the old American tree? Or are you better satisfied with the flavor of the good fruit it bore our fathers, and upon which we have thriven and grown fat as a nation?

You must look at these things. You can not escape them. Be wise, therefore, in time. Until this fatal proclivity towards mediæval errors this crab-like movement backwards - is arrested, let every American citizen be a politician.

S. W. C.

CURSE.

FROM THE GERMAN OF UHLAND. bowg and we abl

THERE stood, all in the olden time, a castle of renown,
That over land and over sea so haughtily looked down;
A wreath of blooming gardens spread fragrance on the air,
And fountains freshly springing in rainbow light were there.

Within there sat a mighty king, the lord of tower and vale;
He sat within his stately hall, so gloomy and so pale;
And what he thinks is terror, and what he looks is wrath,
And in his word is vengeance, and blood is on his path.

Once journeyed to that castle a gifted minstrel pair,

And one had gold locks waving, and one had silver hair;
The old man of the harp renowned, in thoughtful guise did ride,
With lightsome step the younger walked blithely at his side.