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Genius! the embodied form

Of all that's gently good or bad. The breeze
So calm and grateful to the torrid clime,

Or else the devastating spirit of

The storm, who far and wide spreads in his path
Destructions din.

Such being the character and power of genius, it is important that wherever it exists, it should be cultivated to its highest possible degree and directed to the most beneficial purposes. The existence of this quality being assumed, it will be obvious, according to our definition, that it forms no exception to the general law which makes exercise a condition of growth and health. Objects fitted to the nature of the predominating faculties are to be sought out and presented to them: these being, of course, of a character fitted to preserve the mental

harmony necessary to the continued existence of genius. This latter suggestion would easily lead us into a very interesting field of inquiry in relation to the influence and cultivation of the affective powers which more properly belongs to moral philosophy and therefore out of place in the present limited remarks. But this, like every other mental quality, is affected by external circumstances. Some countries are more congenial to it than others; on some soils it flourishes more richly than on others, and some institutions are more favorable to its production and cultivation. It has conditions of its own, which are essential, if not to its existence, at least to its increase and favorable manifestation. The conditions necessary for the nutrition of genius, and the proper mode of cultivation, will therefore form the only remaining subjects of consideration in these remarks, which have perhaps already extended beyond the limits

which the occasion will warrant. And in relation to

the former, we immediately have occasion to appreciate the influence which civil institutious exercise over this as well as all other powers of the mind. The moulding power of governments has been fully recognized in the many revolutions and changes which they have undergone. This irresistible influence in this respect can alone account for the constant and unwearying surveillance exercised over them by those subjected to their authority. They do not merely affect the physical condition of the people of their care, but insinuate their

* Carlyle.

elements into their minds and modify them in accordance with the principles on which they are founded.— What kind of civil institutions, then, it becomes important to inquire, are best calculated for the developement and manifestation of genius. But this needs no investigation. As well might you expect the fettered limb to grow and increase in strength and roundness as the enchained and enthralled mind to throw out the brilliant sparks of rich and refined genius.

Longinus, in his treatise on the Sublime, bears testimony to this truth. Liberty' says he, is the nurse of true genius: it animates the spirit and invigorates the hope of man; encites honorable emulation and a desire of excelling in every art.' Without seeking further for individual opinions in confirmation of this fact, let us recur for a moment to the history of literature in which we are to find in a great measure the history of genius. It would be going too far to say that no instances of this quality can be found even in countries groaning under a despotic yoke. It would not be true; though such instances are rare, and are evidence only of the native powers of endurance and resistance of which mind may be possessed. But take the history of literature as a whole and at what times and where do we find its pages cease to be adorned with the productions of this noble quality, and the sons of genius to want admirers. Our minds unavoidably revert first to the hallowed and familiar stories of the glory and downfall of the Grecian and Roman states. Genius here retired in the steps of liberty, and the glowing lines of Homer and the chaste and tender muse of Virgil gave place to the lascivious song, and the childish legends of the cloister. The era of the revival of literature and the re-appearance of the spirit of genius, are synchronous with that of religious and political disenthralment. The reformation, at one blow, threw off the ecclesiastical and civil bonds which had prostrated the spirits of men and gave new life to their thoughts and feelings. Genius is at home only in the land of liberty, and though she be found sometimes elsewhere, she is but a sojourner in a strange country.

It would be foreign to the present object to enter into a discussion of the nature or merits of the literature of different countries in order to determine the question of their claims to the exhibition of this high quality, but it may be proper to refer to an objection which will be apt to occur to many minds, to the statements just made. France, it may be said, has for the greater part of her history been under something not much better than a despotism, considered both politically and ecclesiasti cally, and still her literature ranks among the first in the world, and lays claim to the possession of many sons of genius. If this were the proper time, it might be shown how her legitimate claims of this kind are to be accounted for, but it is not a fact in our estimation that she exhibits many instances of genius in her literature, but rather, on the contrary, she is extremely destitute of this quality in its true and correct signification.

Liberty then and enlightened civil institutions being so essential to the existence and nature of genius, have not we, as Americans, the surest prospects and the most reasonable grounds of expectation of being exceedingly favored in this respect. There could be no doubt of it, were it not for two circumstances, one of which applies

for con

So

to us in common with most other countries, and the other is peculiar to ourselves. The former will be best stated in the words of Sir William Jones. In his essay on the Ancients and Moderns, when speaking of the multitude of assistances which we have for all kinds of composition, he remarks: "It is very possible that men may rather lose than gain by these; may lessen the force of their own genius by forming it upon that of others; may have less knowledge of their own, tenting themselves with that of those before them. a man that only translates shall never be a poet; so people that trust to other's charity rather than their own industry, will be always poor. Who can tell whether learning may not even weaken invention in a man that has great advantages from nature? Whether the weight and number of so many other mer's thoughts and notions may not suppress his own, as heaping on wood sometimes suppresses a little spark that would otherwise have grown into a flame? The strength of mind as well as of body, grows more from the warmth of exercise than of clothes; nay, too much of this foreign heat rather makes men faint, and their constitutions fainter than they would be without them.”

The other circumstance, peculiar to ourselves is that hitherto, as a necessary consequence of our institutions, and infancy as a nation, we have been a working and commercial people. Our minds have been exclusively devoted to pecuniary and political subjects. We have neglected to cultivate our taste, our moral powers and our literature to the degree which they desire. Let us remember that all parts of the mind as well as of the body stand in need of exercise and nourishment, and that if any of them are neglected in either of these points, or if the nourishment be unhealthy, they will grow weak and unsound. Having, until recently, no literature of our own, we have thrown our country open to a flood of improper and debasing publications of the old world, and thus drawn to our doors, the refuse food of other nations. As American young men, we should spurn these foreign productions from us: inculcating as they do, and insensibly insinuating those principles which our ancestors bled to eradicate from our soil.As free citizens of this country, we have the widest field for the production and developement of this highest mental quality, and may improve it to its fullest extent by merely using the advantages and natural powers of which we are the possessors. We owe it to our country, to make her take the same rank in the intellectual, as she has in the political world, and to do this, we have but to apply the principles of her institutions to our mental cultivation. Let us seek in our own country and resources, the means of mental nourishment, and we will thus drink from the pure fountain of enlightened liberty, instead of slaking our thirst at the tainted springs of despotism and licentiousness.

As no man can expect a continual train of prosperity, he ought not to apprehend a constant adversity.

What a sculpture is to a block of marble, education is to a human soul. The philosopher, the saint, and the hero; the wise, the good, or the great man, very often lie hid and concealed in a plebeian,

"Bring Flowers,"

Flowers are the bright smiles of God upon earth.— Whitefield.
Bring flowers to strew the path of infancy,
When in young joyousness it first goes out
To look on this fair earth. Bring op'ning buds,
And half-blown roses to enwreathe its hair.
They well become childhood's fair, open mien-
Its ruddy cheek, and pleasure sparkling eye.
Ah! what is worthy of a crown of flowers,
If not the brow of infant innocence?

Bring flowers to strew the sunny path of youth;
Its hopes are bright as all their gorgeous dres,
Its fancies sweet as is the dewy air
Just fresh from toying with their tinted leaves;
And life to it is like a summer day,
Full of soft airs and sights of pleasantness.
Bring blooming flowers and weave a rosy wreath
To bind the sunny tresses of sweet youth.
Bring flowers-the sweet, the modest violets,
To weave a wreath for lovely Eva's brow-
Their tint is like that beaming in her eye,
And she is timid and reserved as they.
She loves the flowers-herself the fairest one
That ever graced earth's bowers. Oh! bring them now-
They ever wear a deeper, holier charm,
If she has seen and loved them, unto me.
Bring flowers to wreathe the poet's tuneful lyre;
-They are to him an angel alphabet
Wherewith are written on the hill and plain
Mysterious truths"-bring a myrtle wreath
Entwined with blossoms from the wood and field,
To bind around the poet's lofty brow.

His task, like theirs, to cheer and bless all hearts,
He asks, than this, no richer diadem.

Bring flowers to strew the pathway of the bride
Unto the altar where is offered up
Affection's pure rich gift-plighted the faith
That's never to be broken. Bring flowers,
Fair flowers, and may they image forth

By their bright hues and breath of sweet perfume,
Her future life. Ch! be it as glad as sunlight
Beaming at morn upon the dew-wet earth.

Bring flowers to glad the eye and heart of age;
Their tints call up the rosy dreams of youth,
And bear the spirit of the aged back
To days gone by, when life was full of joy,
As are the flowers of beauty. Not now
When life is waning fast, its light growing dim.
Deny them flowers. Their heads are blossoming
For other worlds than this, and far away.

Bring flowers to strew the dark and sombre pall,
To thing their brightness on the bloodless cheek
That bears the icy hue of death, who steals
Our brightest and best loved and bears them off.
Early to bloom in heaven. Though they fade,
Yet fragrance rises from their withered leaves;
So sweetly rises to bereaved hearts
The memory of the dear, beloved dead.
Bring flowers and strew the pathway to the tomb,
And deck the sod that covers it, and plant
1 hem o'er the humble grave; and as anew
When spring returns they ope to life again.
So when the resurrection morn shall come,
Again will wake the dead to endless 1 fe,
1o fadeless bloom in bowers of Paradise,
Mid the soft airs of Heaven's "sunbright clime."
Violet Dell, June, 1844.

Those who outlive their incomes by splendor in dress and equipage, resemble a town on fire, which shines by that which destroys it.

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of the west invite the husbandman to their more fruitful soil and less rigorous climate, and while too, NewYork is continually offering and increasing the facilities for western emigrants along her canal and railroads, and beyond her borders, the great lakes, like another sea, stretch their fertile shores along the thousand miles of yet but thinly inhabited country. So long as these conditions remain, so long must the mountain region of northern New-York remain a wilderness, unless the mineral wealth and water power shall induce colonization. But this is not likely to take place at present, and we may yet continue to enjoy the thing as it is.

There is probably no portion of the United States the condition of this country, so long as the fertile lands which presents in the same space, equal attractions, in point of scenery, with the northern part of New-York. Whether we look for the high mountain peak, or the lovely quiet lake, the waterfall, or the precipice, the mighty streams or gurgling rivulets, they are all within our view, and almost at the same moment. Few of us often realize that the great area of country, bounded by Lake Champlain, the St. Lawrence, the Black River, and the Mohawk, is, except upon its borders, almost an unbroken wilderness, still covered with its primeval forests, and still traversed by the native wild animals. Nevertheless such is the fact, and from the nature of the country, settlements progress slowly, and the forests maintain their places. Such too, must continue to be

Enjoy it we say, for it offers at our hand almost what we often go hundreds of miles to obtain. What are our

ley, not charged with salts of various kinds as Saratoga, but it is the pure rain from heaven barely filtered for your use, and triturated till it has absorbed its full supply of oxygen as it falls from the mountain sides-you may drink and feel refreshed, you may breath the air freely, and feel that your pulse is quickened, and that every faculty of life is reanimated, that to live and breath is a pleasure, that the motion of your limbs is pleasure, and you will wonder what magic has come over you.

recreations, our summer vacations for, but to gain strength and vigor for renewed and uninterrupted labor through the larger part of the year. Instead of lounging a few weeks at Saratoga, or a few days at Niagara, or taking the fashionable perhaps, and very pleasant trip down the St. Lawrence, leave all these and wend your way to Whitehall, there you will find steamboats equal, if not superior to those of any waters. Land at Port Henry, or its neighborhood, and from there forty miles on horseback with a guide, (or if you please without a guide) through the woods, will bring you to the sources of the Hudson. There, if you do not find a hotel with French cooks and mulatto waiters, you will at least find a roof to cover you. You can catch your own trout, and the exercise will give you an ap-ation; they are beautiful as it is possible for lakes to petite for eating them, if exercise were needed for an appetite here. Here you can breath The mountain air," truly, for you are 2000 feet above tide water, and you will find little difficulty in elevating yourself 2000 or 3000 feet higher if you please. The water, too, it is not like that from the clay and gravel of the Hudson val

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Well, and perhaps you may ask, what is to prevent ennui? Perhaps, the two beautiful lakes, the one, Lake Henderson, within a stone's throw of you, the other, Lake Sanford, within a mile, may afford you some recre

be, enclosed in mountains, and skirted with the tall dark forests, where you scarcely discover the first trace of man's sacriligeous hand, in destroying the tall fair pines. From both these lakes the high mountains are visible in the distance, and from the latter, we have the view presented below.

[graphic]

should ever be your fortune to pass a night in this place, as it has been mine, you will then see and feel the full impression of this grand, this stupendous scene.

Certainly these things, with many others, will occupy sterner material than many of your fellows. But if it your time. Then if you will travel five miles to the north, you trace the main branch of the noble Hudson; it becomes a mere rivulet, which you leap across again and again as you pass, until finally it is lost among the The new feeling that such a place inspires, the kind huge fragments fallen from the sides of the mountains, of elevations, with which the mind is inspired, gives a and you are aware of its presence only, by the sound of new impulse to life, quiets the turmoil, the anxiety, and the little streamlet that gathers from the mountain side. all the unpleasant feelings which render life a burden Here you find yourself in the notch, as it is called; if among men, and carries you once more to a state, like you look on your left, you see a perpendicular wall of that of childhood, when all feelings are pleasureable, rock, and you still elevate them farther, and still farther and all recollections come back to us with the most sub. tiil you have a perpendicular wall of rock before you of duing influences, making us happier and better. Better 1000 feet in height. Reader, you may have been in im- I say, for then and there we communed, and again pressive situations often enough, but if you can stand commune only with the good creator, and with our unawed, here in this narrow pass, with this perpendic- own spirit, and if we have no heavy sins upon our conular wall of rock overhanging you, and on the other side science, we may adore God here, in a "temple not made a mountain of 5000 feet in heighth, you are made of with hands," and if our transgressions lie heavy upon

labor have accomplished their object, the pile is lighted and the husbandman pauses; here where lately stood the forest, he will sow his grain, and the next year will yield an abundance to those dear to him. Is this not, then, a sacrifice of rejoicing?

our hearts, where is there so good a place and time, as in this, God's own temple, and the work of his own hand, where the troubled human spirit has never mingled contention with the harmonies of nature. In what other place can man well raise his thoughts to Heaven, and while he has left care and strife far away, what better This column of smoke has mounted high up into the place to call his heart and mind to a general account atmosphere, and it is scarcely connected with the confor the misdeeds of a year, or what better place to form suming pile, and at last forms a beautiful cloud, floating good resolutious for the future, when free from distrac-away in the clear sky, to visit its refreshing moisture uption and surrounded by all that induces contemplation. on some distant point. Beautiful emblem! and how Perhaps my readers may not agree with me, but I must beautiful in its course and consequences is every little confess for myself, that I am never so devout, as when cloud thus raised. amid the creations of God's hands; when far away from man, be it where it may, in the wilderness, or upon the ocean like prairie, by the mountain torrent, or in the lone watch at sea, when all else sleep, and one feels alone, standing upon the frail bark, and looking over the wide ocean, undimmed on either side as far as the eye can reach.

Still, I have more inducements to offer you, but do not forget that this little streamlet, which we have left, after gathering from all sides, after joining in eternal embrace with many like itself, going on and strengthening as it goes, becomes at length the Hudson! The same Hudson that flows through the mountains of the Highland, such a majestic stream. What a contrast! If you will follow another, (the eastern branch of this river,) for a few miles, you will find yourself between high mountains, and by turning to the right, you are in full view of Mt. Marcy, the highest point in N. York. If you have the courage to ascend this, you will be well repaid for the trouble. A chance indeed, but you may find the ground frozen before you reach the top, and a supply of icewater in the little depressions of the granite dome which surmounts it. Below you, on every side, like a sea, raised in broken waves, lie the mountain peaks and ranges, and far in the distance, the Green Mountains of Vermont, and still farther, the White Mountains of New Hampshire, while between you and these, lies the long valley of Champlain, with its smooth water, hidden by the fleecy fog cloud, which rises and is dissipated by the sun. Turning around, you see, as it were, at your feet, the exquisitely beautiful little lakes, so completely surrounded and shut in by the forest, that you can dream them the haunts of the sylvan deities, while fairies dance upon their shores. A full score of lakes, and sheets of water, can be counted from this mountain peak, and in a very clear atmosphere, half another score can be added to the number of those within view.

We cannot now remain to point out all the beautiful scenes from these mountain summits. The reader must visit them; there is no spot on the continent better worthy of his time; visit them to see for himself, and to know what wild beauties, what grand and picturesque scenery he has within his reach; visit them to know from his own experience something of our own state and country, and to learn practically the difference of surface produced by difference of Geological structure. The traveller will find scarcely a rock besides coarse Granite, and boulders of iron ore, while if he will take the trouble, he may see some of the richest and most extensive beds of iron in the known world. Viens of several hundred feet in width, with a length of two or three miles are known within a mile of the point at which I have placed his rendezvous. The mountain peaks are of dark feldopathic rock, often cut through by enormous dykes of trap, which seem to have rent the mass from top to bottom. But if the reader be geologically inclined, he will take with him the Report of this District, and we will not therefore trouble him with a detail. If he is fond of sporting, he will find plenty of game, more particularly towards autumn; the deer, the bear, the panther, and even the Moose still inhabit these regions; we would pray you to spare the latter, but we fear our prayer would be unheeded. Still if we have sympathy for the beasts, how painful to think that they are so fast disappearing before man. A few years since, and the elk was common in this wilderness, but they have disappeared, and few can be found east of the Mississippi or south of the Canadian wild. The Moose will soon follow, while the deer seem to increase, to a certain point, as man advances, as they are less exposed to the depredations of wolves, on whose head a bounty is set, while by common consent, if not by law, the deer are to a certain extent protected.

But where, perhaps, the reader may inquire, are the ancient proprietors of the soil, the men whose hunting grounds have been profaned? more rare, even than the most timid of the wild beasts, is the Indian in this wilderness; and yet a few of them still make their annual visits to these hunting grounds; their temporary camps are sometimes met with, and always readily distinguished from those of the white hunter. But the favorite animal hunted by these Indians is extinct; the last of the beavers, graces the state collection in Albany, but the last of the Aboriginee's do not still leave their once favorite hunting grounds.

The misty clouds come rolling along up the side of the mountain, and soon envelope you in a dense cold fog, which soon clears off, and you see the floating vapor driven onward over the valley, while another is creeping up from the other side, to surround you. For miles around and westward as far as the eye can reach, there is no sign of human beings, though perchance a log cabin or two may exist. In another direction, though you see no clearing or habitation, the rapidly rising dark smoke and flame, tells you of the burning of a fallow; that the forest has been laid low under the axe of the settler, and the smoke of the first sacrifice is ascending to Hea- Reader in search of a place of recreation, and reinvigven. You can fancy too, the glad hearts and joyous oration, where you can see what you cannot find elsecountenances that surround this fire; the long days of where, and where every faculty of mind and body will

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