ing member, therefore, is not unfrequen in the next, an abuse of the privilege would | undoubtedly be the result, that might lead to the mutilation, if not to the destruction, of many a fair column of debate, though it might greatly abridge the trouble and perplexity of the editors of the Union and National Intelligencer, on whom the mechanical labor devolves of setting up (to use the printing phrase) these massy supports and ornaments of the elephantine temple of American eloquence, which in their flatness and length, and the strange writing which they exhibit, bear, it must be confessed, a much nearer resemblance to the Egyptian obelisk, than the Corinthian column. In the army of the great Frederic, a certain standard of height was established, so that no soldier was enlisted or admitted into its ranks who fell even a line below this fixed measure. It appears to us that a similar principle might be introduced with great advantage into Congress and our other legislative bodies, only with this reversal of its application, that the shorter the orator, or in other words, the more brief his style and habit of expression, the more welcome should be his reception, and the more ready his introduction into the ranks of the great representative army which the people find it necessary to keep on foot for the protection of their rights, and the defence of their liberties. An advantage attending this gage of speech would be, that members instead of peragrating, as they are now in the habit of doing, when once upon their legs, "from China to Peru," would more frequently confine themselves to the matter in hand, and come out in solid column, and gain in strength exactly in proportion as they lost in bulk; or would find that their harangues, like the books of the Sybil, would rise in value as they diminish in volume, and be prized exactly in the ratio of their scarceness and brevity. We cannot but think it Under the rules as existing at the last also advisable that the term question should gress, a gentleman presents one or two views dar ing his hour; another has an insulated viewbe banished from the technical language travels over all the ground before he gets teit of the House, as it seems evidently to be so the ground is gone over and over, and the sa always taken in a literal sense by its mem- arguments presented, perhaps in little dif bers, as challenging a reply from some one or forms, by gentleman after gentleman Fra other, whatever may be the nature of the sub- your debates under the hour rule, and see it tas is not the case. In the discussion of the Tand ject to which it may be applied; so that it Bill of 1842 seventy-five or eighty speeches were is not uncommon for the proposer of a measdelivered, and see how the same ideas were pre ure to find himself answered when he had nei-sented over and over in them.-Mr. Henley, w ther intended to do nor assert anything cal- Mr. C. J. Ingersoll, (in his seat.) There were culated to elicit controversy. An unoffend- | ninety-two speeches on the Oregon question. *The speeches made here were not intended operate upon the House, but upon the co When gentlemen got up and addressedthe House, but to their constituents at horae, Speaker," they did not speak to the Speaker that not by means of a powerful voice, but “r the aid of those powerful instruments, the per and the press.-Ibid. debate. notions of self-interest. If, then, as we have suggested, every member, after being allowed a reasonable and sufficient time to express himself upon a question, were made to pay for everything he said, beyond the prescribed limits, there can be little dubeity, we think, as to the effect which such a rule of speech would have upon his views of economy, and habits of calculation -habits so peculiar to the American proper as to have rendered him, along with his scheming disposition, at once keen in dealing, and rash in speculation, alike lavish and grasping, matter-of-fact and visionary, and in a word a compound of contrarieties, and nearly as great a fumble of inconsistencies, of base and brilliant qualities, as was the great Bacon, whose character has been so satirically and graphically hit off by the little Wasp of Twickenham. For we are satisfied, as respects the rather stringent regulation which we have here proposed, that there are few among our time-wasting, but penny-wise, legislators, who would not, with the fear of such a rule before their eyes, become proficients in at least one branch of political economy, and who would not willingly forego a display, and suppress a thousand fine flourishes, rather than lose a hundred dollars on & speech, or even the one half of that sum. The notions, however, of the members themselves, we are well aware, lean rather to an increase of their compensation, as a measure due to their merits and services. But though the burning desire which usually actuates a Representative, to show to the world that he is not a mere wooden member of the House, but that he has, as the common phrase goes, something to say for himself, is perhaps both allowable and praiseworthy. This soaring ambition was Carried, as it appears to us, a little too far If gentlemen of reputation think they cannot alk less than an hour and a half, every other gentleman who rises would feel under the necesity of consuming the same time, for fear his constituents might think he was not able to make o long a speech as the chairman of the Commitee on Foreign Relations, or Ways and Means. Mr. Morse's speech, same debate. As distinguished from the floods of foreigners nd animals from all lands with whom he is mixd up, and to whom, whether paupers, felons, or reak-jails, he extends a cordial hand, and says, as he Psalmist does to the worm, "Thou art my ellow !" by those who, not a great many sessions back, both spoke and voted in favor of a bill to raise their own daily pay. This, however, they no doubt considered themselves as clearly entitled to do, as having given the world sufficient evidence of their zeal for retrenchment, and love of economy, by always cutting down, whenever the opportunity offered, the compensation of others, particularly the extravagant allowances made to the officers of the army and navy, whose services are so easy, trivial and unimportant, when compared with those rendered by the members of the House, in walking in all weathers to and from the Capitol, on the public businessin folding up and dispatching communications to their constituents-and waking and thinking of the concerns of the nation. Their labors in this way are, indeed, of so arduous and constant a character as to compel them, occasionally, to relax their minds by playing and drinking for nights together, at their lodgings, by attending private parties and official dinners, and giving in to other amusements and excesses, by which both their tempers and stomachs are often seriously deranged and injured, and their nervous systems made so irritable as to render them unnaturally prone to contradict, abuse, and commit assaults on each other-so that their personal concerns, quarrels, and grievances generally occupy much of the time of the House, and often occasion their final adjustment to form one of the chief achievements of a session. With respect to the oratorical standard, or gage of speech, which we consider it expedient to establish, it appears to us, that a column of the Union, or of the official paper of the day, would afford a space amply sufficient for all the purposes of legislation, or of debate and free discussion. We would therefore recommend that this measure be forthwith adopted, and authoritatively prescribed for the observance of members. With respect to the disposition of the fines which might be levied for the infractions of this rule, (for there is no doubt that there would still be many who would willfully endanger their estates, and incur even death and bankruptcy, sooner than We here allude to the anecdote of the lawyer who charged his client, among other items, waking in the night, and thinking of his bus COMPANION of my soul, though years Forever lost! thou'rt ever near, I wander by the sounding shore, O loved and lost, I thought thee near; Proud swell the waves, then sadly fall, Of sweetest words they mournful tell, Deep sunk in heaven's o'er-arching cope, pointed madly toward the land. While now the wave reclining near, Love born of Silence! faintly tell But then the impassioned element, Now wearisome these ocean noises, While gazing on the rising waves, Thy foot-prints on the sliding strand, So fails my life, 'twixt doubt and stre The sea still gaining on the shores, "WOMAN'S RIGHTS." THERE are two great conceptions, very generally altogether overlooked, which it is all important to hold in full view, in our efforts to understand and interpret the mighty problem of human life. In the first place, this life, while it culminates and becomes complete only in the form of morality or spirit, has its root always in the sphere of nature, and can never disengage itself entirely from its power; in the second place, while it reveals itself perpetually through single individuals, it is nevertheless throughout an organic process, which necessarily includes the universal race, as a living whole, from its origin to its end. Nature, of course, can never be truly and strictly the mother of mind. The theory of an actual inward development of man's life, out of the life of the world below him, as presented, for instance, in the little work entitled "Vestiges of Creation," is entitled to no sort of attention or respect. The plant can, by no possibility, creep upwards into the region of sensation; and just as little may we conceive of a transition, on the part of the mere animal, over into the world of self-conscious intelligence and will. The sundering gulf is just as deep and impassable in the one case as it is in the other. But we must not so understand this, as to lose sight at the same time of the mysterious life-union which holds notwithstanding between nature and mind. The world, in its lower view, is not simply the outward theatre or stage on which man is called to act his part, as a candidate for heaven. In the midst of all its different forms of existence, it is pervaded throughout with the power of a single life, which comes ultimately to its full sense and force only in the human person. This should be plain to the most common observation. Nature is constructed, or we should say, rather exists, on the plan of a vast pyramid; which starts in the mass of inorganic matter and rises steadily hrough successive stages of organization, irst vegetable and then animal, till at length it gains in man the summit and crown, towards which it has been evidently reaching and tending from the start. So, in the first chapter of Genesis, we have the process of creation described in this very order, and all conducted to its magnificent conclusion, finally, only towards the close of the sixth day, in that oracle of infinite majesty and love: "Let us make man in our image, after our likeness; and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every moving thing that moveth upon the earth." Man is the centre of nature, without which it could not be in any of its parts the living constitution which it is in fact; for the parts in this case subsist not by themselves, or for themselves simply, but in virtue only of their organic comprehension in the whole. Nature, of course, then rests in man as her own universal sense and end, and can never be disjoined from his life. The union is not outward simply, but inward and vital. Man carries in himself the full mystery of the material world, and remains from first to last the organ of its power. He is, indeed, in another view, far more than nature. Reason and free dom, as they meet together in the idea of personality, belong to a wholly different order of existence; in virtue of which, he towers high above the whole surrounding world, as the immediate representative and vicegerent of God in its midst; made in the image and after the likeness of his glorious Maker, as we are told, and for this reason clothed with supremacy over the entire inferior creation. But still, in all this dignity, his native affinity with this creation is not in the least impaired or broken. Nature clings to him still, as the noblest fruit of her own womb, in whose mysterious presence is fulfilled the last prophetic sense of her whole previous life, while at the same time this is made to pass away in something quite beyond itself. His personality, with all its world-ty cending, heaven-climbing powers, remains rooted to the earth, conditioned at every point by the material soil from which it has sprung, and reflecting in clear image the outward life which has become etherealized in its constitution. The process of nature is thus rising upwards perpetually into the process of morality, by which in the end the problem of the world is to become complete in the history of man. The first is the necessary basis and support of the second, as truly as the stock is made to carry the flower in which it passes away. Man is the efflorescence of nature, the full bursting forth of her inmost sense and endeavor, into the form of intelligence and will; and his whole thinking and working consequently can be sound and solid, only as they are in fact borne and carried by a growth that springs immediately from her womb. There is no opposition then, as is sometimes dreamed, between the natural and the moral. They are, indeed, widely different, but not in such a way as to contradict each other. On the contrary, they can never be rightly sundered or disjoined. Nature, in order that it may be true to itself, must ascend into the sphere of morality; and morality, on the other hand, can have no truth or substance, except as it is found to embody in itself the life of nature, thus emancipated into a higher form. Daughters of heaven as they all are, there is still not a single virtue which is not in this respect, at the same time, truly and fully earth-born; as much so, we may say, as its own sweet image, the natural flower, be it modest daisy or stately dahlia, that quietly blooms at its side. A morality which affects to be purely of the skies, can never be other than sickly and sentimental. The more of nature our virtues enshrine, the more vigorous will they be found to be and worthy of respect. This is one universal law in the constitution of our human life. Another presents itself, as already stated, in the conception of an organic process, in virtue of which the problem of every individual life is, from the start, involved in the problem that includes humanity as a whole. Morality, by its very nature, is something social. It does not simply require the relations which society creates, as an a 4 T outward field for its action, but g also only in the sense of these rel part of its own being. The idea of which is of course originally one and in order that it may become actual, st solve itself into an innumerable maha of individual lives, whose perfection sequently can be found again in nor form than that of their general unions free way. Provision is made for s union in the natural constitution of i manity, bound together as it is by a mon origin, and upheld by perpetual lution from itself in the way of hisan But mere nature here is not suffers secure all that is required. Her comes to its full sense only in the s of intelligence and freedom; and its p per wholeness, therefore, is something? be reached only by the activity of will, recognizing and embracing, with t consent, the relations in which it s quired to move. This again supp-se process, growing forth continually the law of natural evolution and grow just noticed, by which the individual in finding itself under its higher form self-consciousness, may be still engaged seek its true place in the integrat life as a whole, flowing into this by spontaneous force of love, and restingit as the proper and necessary perfect. of its own being. The unity of the can be fully accomplished thus, et through the free action of the living e ments into which it is resolved for th purpose. The process of the union s moral, and in no sense physical, except conditioned by a natural constitut which adumbrates and supports the spin ual structure that springs from its presence It is possible, in such case, of course, tha the freedom of the individual subject mat be abused, and the law of love denied whi he is bound by his nature to honor obey. He may so cling to his own sep arate and single life, through selfishness and sin, as to wrong perpetually the clas of the general life in which this should become complete. But in all this be wrongs, at the same time, the inmost sense and meaning also of his own individa being. Whether he choose to make account of it or not, he is formed for morali ty, that is, for free inward union with hi race, through the social relations in which |