Or the numerous objects of interest with monarchs still prefers to hold her suburban which the banks of the Thames are so residence. This brave old fortress, unlike thickly studded, none are of such surpass- the Tower of London, with its dark records ing grandeur and regal magnificence as of crime, is rife with pleasant memories. Windsor Castle, with its adjacent chapel of Not only is the edifice itself, with its giSt. George, and Eton College. This mas- gantic towers, its broad bastions, and its sive and stately pile is richly stored with kingly halls, sacred with incident and story, poetic associations, and venerable for its an- but Shakespeare has also rendered classical tiquity, it having proudly defied the ravages the very ground on which it stands. of Time for some eight centuries. Here Windsor Forest, with its magnificent old kings were born; here they kept royal state oaks, and its richly variegated scenery, of amid the blaze of fashion and luxurious in- " upland, lawn, and stream," has afforded a dulgence; and here, in the adjoining mau- fruitful theme for the pens of Gray and the soleum, they were buried. Here deeds of author of "The Seasons ;" and Pope, it will chivalry and high renown, that shine on us be remembered, has felicitously pictured from ancient days, were enacted; and it is forth its changeful beauties. As far back here the most exemplary of England's as the days of the Saxons we have records

of a palatial residence at Old Windsor, or forms another epoch in its history-that as its name then was, Windleshora, so prince having reconstructed the greater called from the windings of the Thames in part of the castle, and very largely extended its vicinity. William the Norman built it. William of Wykeham was the archisome portions of the Castle, which, until tect, with the liberal salary of a shilling a the time of Richard I., seems ever to have day. It is said he had six hundred workbeen the peaceful abode of royalty. During men employed on the building, at the rate the civil wars, of which Windsor was a of one penny. It was here Richard II. principal scene, the Castle became the most heard the appeal of high treason, brought important military establishment in the by the Duke of Lancaster against Mowbray, kingdom. The sanguinary struggles con- Duke of Norfolk, which resulted in the nected with the signing of Magna Charta former becoming Henry IV. It was here are familiar to the reader. The birth of the Earl of Surrey, imprisoned for the high Edward III., which took place at Windsor, crime of eating flesh in Lent, beguiled his

solitude with his muse; and here was the purpose.

The suites of royal apartments last prison of that unfortunate monarch, at present in use by the Queen are superb Charles I. In Windsor Castle also resided in the extreme, especially the state drawing the haughty Elizabeth; and along its ter- rooms, in which are nine pictures by Zuccarace might have been seen, in the days of relli; and St. George's Hall—a vast apartthe Commonwealth, the stern figure of the ment, in which the state banquets are lion hearted Cromwell. It was the resi- given.

dence of Henry VII., and the prison of The long walk, extending about three James I. of Scotland. It is indebted for miles in a direct line to the Palace, presents most of its modern splendor to the luxuri- the finest vista of its kind in the world. It ous taste and prodigal expenditure of extends from the grand entrance of the George IV., who obtained from the House Castle, to the top of a commanding hill in of Commons the sum of £300,000 for the the Great Park, which affords a panoramic

St. George's Chapel presents a beautiful specimen of Gothic architecture of different periods. The interior is very magnificent. Its groined roof and splendid stained glass windows, with the pendant banners of the Knights of the Garter, combine together to present an effect of marvellous beauty. Beneath the chapel is the burial-place of several monarchs-of Edward IV., Henry VIII., Jane Seymour, Charles I., the Princess Charlotte of Wales, George III. and his Queen, George IV., William IV. and his Queen, and others.

[Mem. of Great Metropolis.

they heard of a scheme of Oberlin's. To rescue his parishioners from a half-savage state, he determined to open a communication with the high road to Strasbourg, so that the productions of the Ban de la Roche might find

"IT IS IMPOSSIBLE." "IT IS IMPOSSIBLE!" said some, when Peter the Great determined on a voyage of discovery; and the cold and uninhabited region over which he reigned furnished nothing but some a market. Having assembled the people, he larch-trees to construct his vessels. But, proposed that they should blast the rocks, and though the iron, the cordage, the sails, and all convey a sufficient quantity of enormous that was necessary, except the provisions for masses to construct a wall for a road, about a victualling them, were to be carried through mile and a half in length, along the banks of the immense deserts of Siberia, down rivers the river Bruche, and build a bridge across it. of difficult navigation, and along roads almost The peasants were astonished at his propoimpassable, the thing was done; for the com-sition, and pronounced it impracticable; and mand of the sovereign, and the perseverance every one excused himself on the ground of of the people, surmounted every obstacle. private business. He, however, reasoned with them, and added the offer of his own

"It is impossible!" said some, as soon as

AMERICAN IDEAS PRACTICAL

example. No sooner had he pronounced

these words, than, with a pickaxe on his shoul

ished peasants, animated by his example, forgot their excuses, and hastened with one consent to fetch their tools to follow him. At length every obstacle was surmounted; walls were erected to support the earth, which appeared ready to give way; mountain-torrents, which had hitherto inundated the meadows, were diverted into courses, or received into beds sufficient to contain them, and the thing was done. The bridge still bears the name of the "Bridge of Charity."

der, he proceeded to the spot, while the aston- AMERICAN ideas of liberty are inherited, and it is because they are so, that they are so definite and practical. Nothing can with certainty be said to be valuable in human affairs, unless it come to us under the direct sanction of God, or has stood the test of time and experience. We are said to be a practical people, and we laugh at the crude notions upon this subject which prevail in Germany and France. But look into the early writers of our own language. They may have-we think they have -some advantage over these foreign writers in this respect, but it is plain that even to them the matter presents itself in vague and shadowy forms. Take such a writer as Algernon Sydney, an able man, and living at a period of English history comparatively recent and enlightened; any schoolboy can correct his errors. It is the practical operation of government and society which has enabled us to bring civil and religious liberty to such perfection. Our liberties are of pure and noble blood. They have retired again and again before the crushing charge of power, with banners torn but flying; they have raised the song of triumph upon many a hard-fought field; they have borne their testimony meekly in the fires of martyrdom, and unquailingly before the sceptred anger of kings, and they have come at last to guard and protect a mighty people in their triumphant, exulting, and beneficent march over a continent. It is sometimes made matter of regret that we as a nation have little in our past history to appeal to the imagination and the heart. look to the land of our origin, and a line of kings, reaching back into the clouds of fable, stirs the innate loyalty of the human heart; an aristocracy, some of whose ancestors bore pennons at the Battle of Hastings, and others of whom were noble in England when the Norman was a roving pirate in the northern seas, appeal to a natural love of dignity and power. There is some foundation for all this, as the most democratic of us know, when an actual living earl or baron comes among us. We should not think any better of an American lady who would not like to have been the Duchess of Devonshire, or of a surly democrat who would not be glad, if possible, to trace his descent from a Plantagenet, or a Tudor, or to take his seat in the House of Lords. But

"It is impossible!" said some, as they looked at the impenetrable forests which covered the rugged flanks and deep gorges of Mount Pilatus, in Switzerland, and hearkened to the daring plan of a man named Rapp, to convey the pines from the top of the mountain to the Lake of Lucerne, a distance of nearly nine miles. Without being discouraged by their exclamations, he formed a slide or trough of twenty-four thousand pine trees, six feet broad, and from three to six feet deep; and this slide, which was completed in 1812, and called the slide of Alpnach, was kept moist. Its length was forty-four thousand English feet. It had to be conducted over rocks, or along their sides, or under ground, or over deep places, where it was sustained by scaffoldings; and yet skill and perseverance overcame every obstacle, and the thing was done. The trees rolled down from the mountain into the lake with wonderful rapidity. The larger pines, which were about a hundred feet long, ran through the space of eight miles and a third in about six minutes. A gentleman who saw this great work says, that "such was the speed with which a tree of the largest size passed any given point, that he could only strike it once with a stick, as it rushed by, however quickly he attempted to repeat the

blow."

Say not hastily, then, "It is impossible." It may be so to do a thing in an hour, a day, or a week, or by thoughtlessness, carelessness, and indolence; but to act with wisdom, energy, and perseverance, is to insure success. "Time and patience," says a Spanish author, "make the mulberry leaf satin!" and another remarks, that "care and industry do everything."

[Facts, not Fables.

We

should be less, and these restless energies be left to seek a new channel, there will be danger; but this is too remote to be measured and provided for now.

these things we must manage to dispense selves up in the world too fast; eating and with; and we have sometimes thought that we drinking too much; in one word, we go by might, by a little effort, invest some things steam and electricity, from the cradle to the which we actually have, with historical asso- grave. Clearly we are not a contented, in the ciations not wholly without power over the sense of being a happy people. But there is feelings and the imagination. King John and another kind of content, which comes of havhis barons are dust, but that which has made ing an object in view, and constant occupation. them immortal is in our possession; and every And this the American people have, and each man, as he rises to be sworn upon the petit individual has so much of it that he cannot jury, may gratify his pride by remembering find time to help anybody else make a disturthat he does so by virtue of the courage which bance. If the time should ever come when braved the tyrant on the field of Runnymede. the opportunities of individual enterprise Every citizen who has the ill-luck to be before the court upon a writ of Habeas Corpus, may console himself in his misfortunes by remembering that he is enjoying a right which was gracefully yielded to his subjects by the Merry Here, then, we are, the best part of a contiMonarch, and which no blandishments of flat-nent in our hands, and the rest waiting till tery, and no frown of power, could ever recall. called for; with a population numbering some The humblest man who goes to the ballot- twenty-four millions; our increase during the box, and thus participates in the government last ten years greater than the whole populawhich rules over him, may take pleasure in the tion with which we went through the war of reflection that to secure him this right, one the Revolution; and this population not serfs, monarch perished on the scaffold, and another ignorant and brutish, like the subjects of died in exile. This liberty, thus definite, prac- Nicholas; nor Indians, effeminate and supertical, and inherited, is part of the nation's life. stitious, like many of the subjects of her MaWherever any portion of this people go, they jesty, Queen Victoria; but energetic, active, carry with them a well-ordered state. The intelligent men, who possess and know how constitution of California is said to be the to use steamships and steam-mills, the railway most perfect model of a free government and the telegraph, the philosophy of Bacon, known among men. Suppose a colony of the faith of Luther, and the principles of Roger Germans or Frenchmen should emigrate and | Williams ; in short, Yankees of the nineteenth attempt to form a goverment? This illus- century. Is there any ground to fear for the trates the difference between the vague senti- prosperity of such a people, so situated? ment of liberty and its practical understanding; between liberty in theory and liberty in practice; between liberty inherited and newly created. We all feel the force of this element of our power.

We wish to guard against an impression which may have been produced by some of our remarks, that we have an undue admiration of the rude strength of society, and are indifferent to some of its more refined and A people thus possessed of civil and reli- subtle elements. We would be very glad to gious liberty, and so intelligent, energetic, and see wealth used with a broader humanity, and active, would naturally be a contented people; a more far-seeing wisdom diffusing itself and this contentment is itself an element of among the abodes of honest and unfortunate strength. But this requires explanation. That poverty; multiplying institutions for the preserene and tranquil frame of mind which vention of crime and the reformation of the springs from self-discipline and control, from a just estimate of the relative value of things, and from a true balance of the faculties and habitual obedience to all laws in their due order, the American people have not, and few individuals among them have. We are restless, ill-tempered, and one-sided; worrying ourselves through life in order that we may get ready to live; working too hard; pushing our

criminal; undertaking and completing works of public improvement, to strengthen and bless this and coming generations; endowing still more liberally all institutions of learning, from the common school to the college; covering the land with an architecture of more than Athenian beauty, and flowering out into galleries of art. Nor are we insensible to the vices and follies of society. There are things among