They are discernible in our ceaseless emigrations, all of us being from the first but a nation of emigrants-in our daring revolutionary and subsequent wars-in our ravenous and insatiable appetite for territory-in our mercantile speculations, our religious opinions, our indomitable protestantism, our camp-meetings, our stump and our legislative oratory, our pulpits, our pleadings, our tribunals, our electionseasons, our periodical press, our multitudinous new inventions, our political expedients, our vices, our various societies to repress them, our laws, our violations of them, our schools, and sometimes in our very amusements-the most popular exhibition, for instance, at the West, for several years, having been a terrific representation of the infernal regions, with the actual roaring of the flames, and the audible howlings of the damned; while, at this moment, a picture three miles long, representing the whole valley of the Mississippi, is delighting hundreds of thousands of visitors.

The traces of these same qualities we also perceive in what little national literature we yet can boast of, as having made an impression on the European world. The theolo gian Edwards-our state papers, so eulogized by Madame De Stael-our recent historians-our eagle-winged Channing, and bird-of-paradise-plumed Irving-our Brockden Brown-our other few distinguished novelists-and the elite of Bryant's and Longfellow's poetry-all exhibit the possession of these common characteristics.

But, as these many qualities are peculiarly liable to excess, abuse and degeneracy, how can their more perilous tendencies be better resisted than by the assiduous and liberal cultivation of all rich and wholesome foreign literatures?

We have seen, in these remarks, how a resort to such sources, in all ages and climes, has been productive of the happiest effects; how taste has been rectified-and expres sion improved-aud thought fired-and a nation's mind assisted to burst old shells and put on new wings. Fortunately, the facilities for such processes are greater in our own country than were ever known before. Different races may approach each other on our common friendly soil, without having to wait long ages for the removal of national antipathies; and their literatures may be brought together without the necessity of fighting their way through mutual mistake, prejudice, ridicule, and exasperation. The Frenchman and the Englishman sit down side by side on the borders of the same stream, and the German teaches his

little son the language of his fathers, while he sends him to the common school provided by their adopted country.

Among modern literatures, to be resorted to for these great purposes, the preference should unquestionably be given to the English. Its pages we should turn with daily and nightly hands. It is the well-spring of our own language. It embodies a spirit the nearest to our own. Without fear of undue, servile dependence, let us freely consult its past and present monuments; let us listen with patience to its malignant or well-meaning criticisms on our national. defects, and let us endeavor to engraft the choicest mental vegetation of our English ancestry on our own free, intrepid and vigorous stock.

There are disappointed and jealous American writers who complain that a disproportionate patronage is lavished among us on English literature. But so dangerous a heresy ought boldly to be met and extinguished. It would be suicidal folly to turn away from the unrivalled treasures of England, out of tenderness for our own authors, however promising and meritorious they may be. We must not renounce the privilege of looking, almost with a fond adoration, to the country where there are now, and have been for many a long year, the mighty workings of an intellect the most robust-a research, the most varied, laborious, and successful a scholarship the most graceful and accomplished-a science the most profound-a genius the most inventive, pathetic and humorous-a poetry familiar with the loftiest aspirings or the tenderest tremblings of the human spirit and all sustained by the advantages of a metropolitan position among the nations, a thousand years. of traditionary lore and accumulated material, and an intensity of competition, of itself sufficient to call forth whatever powers and excellencies lie dormant in our nature. Nothing indeed, could better guard us from our national tendencies to a faulty extravagance, than the unwearied and straight-forward good sense of the Anglo-Saxon mind; that mind, by the way, which alone has clung, from the times of the heptarchy, with a kind of instinctive, yet enlightened and liberal tenacity, to the combined study of the sacred scriptures and the pagan classics.

The remarkable fact here alluded to, is at once a justification of the leading principle of this review, and the bequest of an invaluable example for Americans to follow.

As for the treasure of the scriptures, it is already, or may be in the hands of every American citizen. It contains, beside the waters of eternal life, whatever of æsthetic riches can be found for us in the whole body of the oriental literatures, without their childish extravagances and defects. The Greek and Roman classics, we must continue to study with unflagging, or rather, with increasing ardor. We trust that something even of the utility of that study, has been demonstrated in these remarks. But even though it came short of mere mechanical utilitarianism, and failed to satisfy the political economist, let it be remembered that the alabaster-box of precious ointment may be sometimes substituted for the hundred pence given to the poor. It is cheering to find a general sentiment prevailing in our country, in harmony with this view. Notwithstanding incessant attacks on classical learning, and clamorous appeals against it from every quarter to the principle of utility, the hundred colleges and universities throughout our land, have persevered in maintaining the Greek and Roman classics on the foreground of a liberal education. We may have few or no giants in erudition like those of Europe-but it is evident that our standard of classical learning is rising from the point of depression to which it had once sunk. A goodly number of elementary books and text-books proceed every year from the press. The best German preparatory works abound more and more among us in accurate translations. In all our new territories and states, there is a constant demand for teachers of the classics.

Abundant encouragement should next be given to the study of the modern European and other languages, according as taste and opportunity may lead the way.

By these means, and by the exercise of an unsleeping discrimination, we may yet hope to build up a literature, that shall have something of the primitive and earnest simplicity of the scriptures-something of the practical good sense of the English-something of the precision and point of the French-something of Italian smoothness-something of Spanish grandeur-something of German comprehensiveness, and much of the all-pervading, never-dying, perfect taste of the ancient classics, blended with the free, independent and elastic attributes of our own national mind. Even though these specific foreign ingredients should not be perceived in the new compound of American literature,

yet a result may be happily produced, no less precious. It has been acutely remarked, on the circumstance of one national character, arising from the union of any two separate races, that "in morals, as in physics, the commingling of two ingredients appears to produce a third totally different from the rest. The new substance does not unite the qualities which distinguished its constituent elements while they remained apart, but acquires qualities which were found in neither."*

It is a subject worthy of our most earnest contemplation. The literature of a country will sooner or later find its way for good or ill, to the minds and hearts of its whole population. A Voltaire could loosen the faith of palaces and of faux-bourgs-a Hannah More could strengthen that of princes and of peasants. Is it it not worth while to furnish the humblest individual with accurate and impressive forms of thought and language, which shall convey as nearly as possible the exact truth of things, and awaken the most preferable associations? Is it not worth while to provide by every possible method, that the resources of the listless and the vacant shall be multiplied, that light shall be afforded to the inquiring, and that the incessant activity of the intellect and the affections should be furnished with the most salutary and palateable food? A literature which accomplishes this for any country, is the greatest of its blessings. Misfortunes may overwhelm her; the tide of invasion or the changes of time may sweep away the accumulated monuments of her wealth and grandeur; her sons may sit down to weep by her broken columns; or more bitter still, they may be forced to remove in exile from her cherished dust; but if they can still press her immortal literature to their bosoms, they have not yet lost their mother-land,-she lives and speaks to her children.

For. Quar. Rev., No. 71.

ART. III.-MEXICO-HER PEOPLE AND REVOLUTIONS; with a view of Spanish misrule in America as the cause of present Spanish American decadence.

1. Pazo's Letters on South America. London. 1819. 2. Vol. XIX. North American Review. 1824. Article X., "South America."

3. Mexico in 1827. By H. G. WARD. London. 1828. 4. Robinson's Memoirs of the Mexican Revolution. Philadelphia. 1820.

5. Ensayo sobre el verdadero estado de la cuestion social y politica que se agita en la Republica Mexicana. Por DON MARIANO OTERO. Mexico. 1842.

6. Revoluciones de Mexico desde 1808, hasta 1830. Por DON LORENZO DE TAVALA. Paris. 1831.

EVERY writer who desires to present a philosophical view of the country he describes, ought to contrast its government and its people. According to the laws of nature,governments should be the offspring of popular will, and consequently, the mere exponents or manifestations of national character. But, in all countries, except our own, they have arisen during centuries of national existence; and, receiving their tone rather from the rulers than the ruled, have been slowly and slightly modified so as to compromise with the natural expansion of popular liberty. Where central power was either exceedingly strong or consolidated in the hands of an aristocracy, the system of government has remained unchanged from century to century, supported by military despotism and a vigilant police. Meanwhile, the people, advancing gradually, though almost imperceptibly, in arts, mechanics, science, literature, and the general diffusion of knowledge, presented an extreme contrast to their government, which was designed for a state of things that existed when civilization was in its infancy. Mind advances-but government pauses. This fatal variance, this unnatural diversity, is the origin of revolutions. Enlightened humanity will not bear the oppression of obsolete feudalism; whilst sovereigns and privileged orders, educated in the traditionary craft and habits of this worn-out scheme, are reluctant to resign their power, or, even to yield a part of it, with graceful generosity. It is then that the progressive spirit of the age interposes, and the handful of despots are forced to succumb to the natural rights of the multitude.