especially the newspapers, which it seems are all in alliance with radicalism, a word of most alarming import, which he has picked up since his residence among us, and which means not only opposition to every thing that is established, but hatred of every individual who possesses wealth or influence in the state. He sneers and triumphs as he assures us that our so-much vaunted constitution is not in Magna Charta; that it does not exist in the Act of Settlement, signed by William the Third; that it has no place in what he is pleased to call our shapeless code of laws. But is it necessary to contradict a writer, or even to reason with him for a moment, who does not see that the constitution, the existence of which he denies, produced all the liberty which these instruments and institutes have secured; and that it is that something which, in our earlier history, said to monarchical tyranny, "thus far shalt thou go, and no farther;" and which has at different periods restrained the conflicting powers of the aristocracy and the commonalty, when they threatened each other or endangered the throne. To what but our constitution are we to attribute the slow and gradual advance which freedom has made over the remnants of that tyranny which grew to its height during the reign of the Tudors, and was effectually thrown down by the exile of the last of the Stuarts? It is this constitution that enables us to record on the historic page changes that would have convulsed other nations to their centre, effected without violence, or any very marked excitement of the popular mind. Mobs without massacres, and bloodless revolutions, are the boast of England and England alone. Baron D'Haussez makes himself very merry with 66 a Radical procession ;" talks facetiously of his majesty the mob; the bellowing, howling sovereign, who not only shouted himself, but compelled the bystanders to shout, and who advanced in four or five files; for you must know, adds the witty statesman, "he is a many-bodied being." Now, supposing, as was the case in France at the time of her first Revolution, we had known only an iron despotism, and had been, at the crisis to which the Baron refers, equally destitute of a constitution, what would have been the result? Has he not heard of a sovereign people who went to the palace of royalty, not simply to tell the king that they had just discovered the constitution needed modification, but to drag that king, and his beautiful and high-minded consort, from the throne, only to hurry them to a mock tribunal, and then to execution? The Baron may retort, perhaps, that Englishmen once did the same. It is true a similar event happened, but with this difference as to the causes: Louis XVI. was sacrificed by the sheer madness of anarchy-our Charles I. violated every principle of right, and instead of ruling by the Parliament and the laws, he acted in open and haughty defiance of both. "Public opinion" is, with the Baron, a matter of some perplexity; but it has puzzled wiser heads than his. Few give themselves the trouble to inquire how it is formed and expressed; they are equally at a loss to define or to trace it to its origin. The dominant clamour of Parliament is not public opinion-the decisions of the legislature are not public opinionthe press, with its ten hundred tongues, is not public opinion-public opinion is not changing and shifting like the wind-it is the aggregate wisdom of ages, working its way slowly and silently through each successive generation; it is the under-current, which moves on in spite of all the tumult and noise upon the surface. Nothing is done in haste; we have no mouvement, no torrent, that rushes onward, bearing down every thing in its fury-no heedless excitement, which destroys in an hour the work of centuries, without having any thing solid and useful to raise on its ruins. Public opinion is with us the settled conviction of a whole people, who are taught to discuss every subject which involves the well-being of the state, and which is never arrived at till it has been viewed in all its practicable and possible relations. It is the mind of the community enlightened and well grounded in all the great principles of civil policy; and it is the moral heart-the seat of life and energy. Baron D'Haussez thinks the press is its principal, if not its exclusive organ; and by the press, as we have said, he means the newspapers. How much more luminous and just are the views of Mr. Rush: "Some will suppose," he observes, "that the newspapers govern the country. Nothing would be more unfounded. There is a power not only in the government, but in the country itself, far above them; it lies in the educated classes. Now, the daily press is of the educated class; its conductors hold the pens of scholars-often of statesmen. Hence you see no editorial personalities, which, moreover, the public would not bear; but what goes into the columns of newspapers, no matter from what sources, comes into contact with equals, at least, in mind among readers, and a thousand to one in number. The bulk of these are unmoved by what such newspapers say, if opposite to their own opinions, which, passing quickly from one to another, in a society where population is dense, make head against the daily press, after its first efforts are spent upon classes less enlightened. Half the people of England live in towns. This augments moral and physical power;-the last, by strengthening rural parts, through demand for their products,-the first, by sharpening intellect, through opportunities of collision. The daily press could master opposing mental forces, if scattered; but not when they can combine. Then, the general literature of the country reacts against newspapers. The permanent press, as distinct from the daily, teems with productions of a commanding character. There is a great class of authors always existent in England, whose sway exceeds that of the newspapers as the main body the pioneers. Periodical literature is also effective: it is a match, at least, for the newspapers, when its time arrives. It is more elementary, less hasty. In a word, the daily press in England, with its floating capital in talents, zeal, and money, can do much at an onset. It is an organized corps, full of spirit, and always ready; but there is a higher power of mind and influence behind that can rally, and defeat it. From the latter source it may also be presumed that a more deliberate judgment will, in the end, be formed on difficult questions, than from the first impulses and more premature discussions of the daily journals. The latter move in their orbit by reflecting also, in the end, the higher judgment by which they have been controlled." The Protestant Episcopal Church of England affords the Baron, who is "un bon Catholique," an opportunity of pronouncing an eulogium at its expense upon the French clergy and the celibacy of the Roman Catholic priesthood. We really are not disposed to enter the lists with him; but how easy would it be to establish the superior morality of men who obey the dictates of nature and the law of Heaven to those who, in denying to themselves domestic enjoyments, become selfish and ascetic, or profligate and debauched! The great wealth of the English clergy is another question. As contrasted with the poverty of those of France, the dignitaries of the Protestant hierarchy are very natural objects of Catholic envy. We do not wish the Church of England less wealthy; we only desire to see its wealth more equally distributed. Baron d'Haussez manifests very strongly the spirit in which foreigners delight to indulge, and in which they seem to emulate each other, that of depreciating the state of the arts in England, and British taste, especially in reference to music and painting. Where there is confessedly much to censure, or rather to regret, a generous mind would have found something to commend. Of music we shall say nothing, except that we must be dull indeed, if, after paying the best musicians of Germany, Italy, and France, the most enormous salaries, and listening to them year after year, we discover no symptoms of improvement. Nor can we now discuss the question whether we have among us artists fully able to compete with the most celebrated of their foreign contemporaries. Be this as it may, we cannot yet believe that it is impossible for the arts to flourish among us. We are better pleased with the liberal anticipations of Mr. Rush than with the sombre and somewhat ungenerous conclusions of the Baron. "In going through the rooms (at the Royal Academy) it was not easy," says this American stranger, " to avoid the reflection that a day of fame in the arts awaits Britain. She is still in her youth in them; she has made hardly any efforts. Busy in climbing to the top of everything else, she has not had time: the useful arts have occupied her. At the head of these in Europe, she is now at a point for embarking in the fine arts. To suppose the English climate not favourable to their cultivation is strange;-a climate where beautiful appearances of nature abound; that has been favourable to every kind of mental eminence; where the inferior animals are seen in full size and strength, and the human form in all its proportions and beauty, not a climate for painters and sculptors! But it is said there must be a certain delicacy of thought and feeling to appreciate the world of nature, and deck it with the glories of art. Is not, then, the country of Shakspeare and Scott, of Milton, and Byron, and Moore, one for painters ? How came the Dutch with a school of painting of their own, and an eminent one? Is their sky more genial? and will not the English, with political institutions and social manners of their own, try new fields of art? An American adopts the anticipation the rather, because he clings to the belief that his own country, like republics of old, is, by and by, to take her stand in the arts." In so large a field for speculation, and among such a multitude of topics, it would be surprising were there not to be found some which call for animadversion; and where there is a disposition to find fault with the best things, there will be little difficulty in turning the scale to the disadvantage of what is equivocal, and in exaggerating that which confessedly is worthy of censure. We wish we were not obliged to acknowledge that there are evils in our political condition which admit not of palliation or excuse; and we care not with what severity they are assailed, with what burning indignation they are denounced. Evils which, in other states and countries, have no prominence, because all is bad, stand out, in our political system, as monstrous and intolerable. The worst of them, and which Baron d'Haussez has condemned in no measured terms, thanks to that reforming spirit which makes him tremble and turn pale, will soon be swept away. The state of the law is undergoing revision, and must be changed;-the impressment of seamen the system of factory slavery, the most cruel and shameless abuse of human rights that has ever disgraced any age or country, and the crimes and miseries of Ireland, the effect of misgovernment and horrible oppression, will ere long vanish before a spirit of just and benign legislation. We thank even foreigners for their deserved reproaches; and doubt not that the public mind, awakened into energy, will promptly remove the causes which have provoked and justified them. WORDS FOR MELODIES. BY MRS. HEMANS. DIRGE AT SEA. SLEEP!-we give thee to the wave, Sleep!-thy billowy field is won! Midst the hush at set of sun, Boom thy knell. Lonely, lonely is thy bed! Never there may tear be shed, Marble rear'd, or brother's head Bow'd to weep. Yet thy record on the sea, Borne through battle high and free, Long the red-cross flag shall be, Sleep, oh! sleep! SISTER! SINCE I MET THEE LAST. Sister! since I met thee last, O'er thy brow a change hath pass'd; Deep and still a shadow lies; From thy voice there thrills a tone Never to thy childhood known; Through thy soul a storm hath moved, Gentle sister! thou hast loved! Yes! thy varying cheek hath caught Far along the wandering stream Thou art followed by a dream; In the woods and valleys lone, Tell me not the tale, my flower! FAR AWAY. Far away!-My soul is far away, Where the blue sea laves a mountain shore; In the woods I see my brother play ; Midst the flowers my sister sings once more,— Far away! Far away!-My dreams are far away, When, at midnight, stars and shadows reign; "Gentle child," my mother seems to say, 66 Follow me where home shall smile again,"- Far away!-My hope is far away Where Love's voice young Gladness may restore: O thou Dove! now soaring through the day, Lend me wings to reach that brighter shore,— Far away! |