at a celebration of Havard University, where the love of all that is truly English abounds, and he thus reports in reference to that occasion :

"I had a long and interesting conversation with my new acquaintances opposite, President Quincy and Judge Story, and we agreed that we belonged to the same great national family, and were bound to consider ourselves near relations. The Boundary question was brought forward, and they all seemed to be aware of the responsible part I had played in it. Other topics were introduced, all breathing respect, good feeling, and affection for our mutual fatherland.

"A General Sumner talked to me enthusiastically about England; and General Dearborne was warm in his expression of good feeling towards us. He appears a most talented and well-informed person, with the frank and open bearing of a soldier. He touched on the sympathizers and their despicable deeds, on our late border feuds, and on the friendship existing between General Scott and Sir John Harvey, with some well-timed praises of the latter.

"I cannot recollect, nor, if I could, have I time or space to enumerate, one half of the persons I conversed with; but all, both male and female, I again repeat, seemed anxious to make out a pedigree connecting them with Old England, towards which they universally expressed the warmest regard and attachment: and I can truly say, that during the entire day I have not encountered a single disagreeable or vulgar person."

Hear also part of what is told even of the often named General Scott, who is "a very tall, handsome, well-set-up, soldier-like personage:"

"On our road home the conversation turned upon the subject of peace or war, on which General Scott spoke in a noble and disinterested manner. He said he never could believe that any Englishman would wish to see their country plunged in war for the chance of getting a riband or a star, nor would the greatest reward that his country could give induce him to desire it.

"He then expatiated on the great loss that would be sustained by both countries; that America took annually seventeen millions of our manufactures; and that, although his country had the expectation this year of a most superabundant harvest, and many speculators expected England to have a bad one, yet still the idea that any advantage to America could result from a rupture with us was a mistaken one, for he considered the interests of the two nations to be so blended, that on the prosperity of England depended that of the United States, arguing from the great effect a dearth would have on the currency question. This he did clearly and forcibly, but I have neither time nor political economy enough at my fingers' ends to do his argument justice.'

The Commander-in-Chief of the American Army was not less warm and generous in his views and expressions with regard to the

relations which ought always to exist between the two countries. Even a principal officer, whose station was in the centre of the Border ardour itself, spoke and had acted in a manner that was highly satisfactory to Colonel Maxwell, who thus testifies:

"On my return to the hotel, I spent the evening with Colonel Bankhead, the colonel of the regiment, as well as the commandant of this frontier district; and a more straightforward, hearty, frank, intelligent soldier I have seldom met with. His beautiful and engaging daughter, with the whitest and smallest hand I ever beheld-a Georgian brunette-rendered this agreeable evening still more delightful by her presence; and goodhumouredly permitted her honoured sire and myself to smoke cigars and suck mint juleps; whilst I listened to his manly and honourable opinions about Sir George Arthur, the acts of his own government, and the manner he had endeavoured to deal with the wretches whom he had detected trying to involve the two countries in war. I was greatly pleased to find that his opinions were an echo of what General Scott had so repeatedly and emphatically stated to me.

"Colonel Bankhead, who commands under the General, gave me most ample proof of the correctness of everything he advanced and of this I am firmly convinced, that so long as the military command is in the hands of men as honourable as the two I have named, we have nothing to apprehend from the ruffians and wretches who, whilst they call themselves patriots and sympathizers, are labouring only to stir up the evil passions of their deluded followers."

And if ever a subject of the British crown who has visited the United States of America, and afterwards published an account of what he observed and felt in the course of his tour, deserved to be quoted as a hearty peace-maker between the two countries, the mother and daughter, that subject is the Colonel. Listen to a portion of the speech which he addressed to a dinner party in New York:

"I myself was nursed and brought up to look upon you as nothing better than lucky rebels; and I came to this country prejudiced against the blood of my fatherland: and, as I have ventured to tell the men I have conversed with-nay the women too-I thought before I landed on your shores, that I was coming amongst a parcel of uncouth, uncultivated savages!' Here roars of good-humoured laughter and applause interrupted me; and What do you think of us now?' was exclaimed from all quarters.

"What do I think of you now? Why, that personal observation and other circumstances have made me (as I hope it will millions of my countrymen) change my tune. And I prophesy that America and England must and will be firm, steady, and close friends; and that the feelings of national pride, national industry, national independence, liberal institutions, international commerce, and enlightened minds, must make us respect and love each other; besides being drawn together both by birth and by language.'

"I added, 'I admire France, I love Italy, and I could willingly end my days, if necessary, in Germany,-in all of which countries I have spent many years, I glory in England, Scotland is my own, my native land; but my visit to the United States has filled me with astonishment and enlarged my mind, and most heartily do I rejoice that I came here to judge for myself."

At the commencement of our observations relative to the present volumes we noticed the strong testimony which the Colonel bears towards almost every thing he witnessed during his Run; and we cannot do better than conclude with two more specimens of his oftrepeated admiration :

"There is, I assert it for the tenth time, a feeling of love and veneration for the land of their ancestors inherent in the breast of every American; and it is strongest with those who are the most eminent for talents and learning it is their pride and their boast; and let but England meet these generous sentiments in the way they merit, and the union between the two nations must be indissoluble.

:

"A great danger hangs over America,-the danger of breaking into parts, not only from the discordant interests of the Northern and Southern States, but from the vast and still increasing extent of her territory. If she weather this, and continue to hold together, she must become one of the greatest and most powerful countries in the world: and England and America united, as they ought to be, with the same common lineage, the same language, and the same faith, might bid defiance to all the kingdoms of the earth!"

Again,

"Often and often was I told, before I started on this tour, 'Oh, you like respect and attention,-you are rather sensitive,-you'll be put out every instant: the levelling system won't suit you; you'll be daily and hourly annoyed by their vulgarity and want of refinement.' Now, in reply, I have only to declare, to make use of an American phrase, 'I have never yet had my dander up, my choler excited, or my bile disturbed:" I never was where I found more to like and less to quarrel with."

Having now exhibited the good and hopeful Colonel with all possible fairness, we may be allowed to append a word or two of our own with regard to the existing relations between Great Britain and the United States, and the probable future. The result of Mr. M'Leod's trial, coupled with the release of Grogan who was illegally seized by some Canadian volunteers on the American side of the boundary, are very recent events which have given the highest satisfaction in this country. The strictness and perfect fairness of the forms by which M'Leod was tried, and the unmolesting, yea kind treatment that was shown him after his acquittal, are circumstances which not only demonstrate that the American nation is not so

unreasonable, jealous of England, rapacious and wanton as had been generally given out, but proofs that cannot fail to remove much of the soreness of British feeling which constituted real difficulty in the questions still pending between the two countries. The present sentiments in England, at least, are most favourable to the preservation of peace; but it would be a great mistake to imagine that peace has been completely secured by the release of Grogan and M'Leod. Two accidents have passed over without producing war, but the angry feelings on both sides of the frontier still exist, and the main questions and disputes are by no means yet settled. Time, opportunity, and calmness, however, have been gained; and therefore an unexpected turn has taken place, that affords room for friendly negotiation, which surely the peace-makers on both sides of the Atlantic will improve, and which if the two governments neglect great will be their folly and deep-dyed their crime, viz. that of gross omission.

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Without a doubt there are elements in activity and matters for delicate treatment of no ordinary tenderness in relation to the mother and her daughter. Just think of the people on both sides of the Border, their character and propensities: take the Volunteers of Canada as a body,-why they have all the recklessness and the undisciplined violence of freebooters; while there are multitudes of American citizens on the other side of the boundary, who are not only equally beyond regular control, but who are infuriated refugee rebels, from Great Britain, that are ever stirring up petty brawls, or ready to take advantage of an émeute.

As to the difficult and delicate questions which are still unsettled, it is only necessary to mention that of the boundary misunderstanding. Here a point of honour is so deeply involved as to require the arbitration of a third party. But, not to dwell upon this point, think how peculiarly situated the governments are on both sides. It now appears, it has been proved, that the State of New York, for example, is beyond the control of the United government, and yet that province may at once bring the Union into a dilemma at any time, which nothing but a national decision can dispose of. Now here is an anomaly, a defect which requires definition and amendment on the one side. But mark what is the condition and peculiar character of the Canadas! These colonies are solely retained by means of a strong military force; and, not to be more particular, the misgovernment of the said colonies has produced and kept alive, created and fomented on the part of the French descendants and others, a state of things that is as much to be feared as any designs and feelings exterior or beyond the line of national demarcation. In a word, now is the time and opportunity for friendly negotiation; and still there are questions of extreme nicety and pressure to be set at rest. We hope, and we fear.

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ART. VIII.-The Library of the Old English Prose Writers.

Cambridge, U. S.

THREE or four volumes of this Transatlantic Library present to us subjects and contents that may worthily occupy a few pages of the Monthly Review.

The old English poets have been much more known to general readers than the prose writers. While the former have been published in collections more or less complete, and many of them in separate and elegant forms, recommended, too, by the labour of critics in notes and corrections of the text, and by extracts and biographical sketches, a considerable part of the old prose was rarely to be found but in its original form, and in the larger public and private libraries, where everything is expected to be laid up, and where few but deep readers are supposed to go. This remark is not intended to apply to the works of one or two men of commanding minds, who have so impressed themselves upon the philosophy and literature of their countrymen, upon their very habits of thinking and inquiring, that they can never cease to be modern, to be read and studied; nor of others of inferior rank, whose subjects are so stirring at all times, that they are as a matter of course always kept before the public by one party or another in the church, in politics, or on the arena of popularity. We may, for example, refer to the somewhat unobtrusive company of wits, moralists, and fictionists, and also the sound practical preachers, as well as the chroniclers and observers-the satirists of the day-men of retirement and study, and of quiet, original, and desultory reflection, who, with great intrinsic merit, besides being among the fathers of our literature, might yet have been expected to become gradually unfashionable, and not be generally missed when they were out of the way.

And yet much hid treasure was to be found in them, which might be safely and usefully turned to account. Much was there that a patient investigator of truth could not prudently overlook in tracing the history of opinions and their alternating diversified aspects,―in watching the close connexion between the seemingly careless suggestions of some early writer, and the doctrines that afterwards came into vogue, or that have agitated the highest minds; much was there that the curiosity of the mere scholar would lead him to study with a zeal as ardent and as well recompensed as was ever devoted to the more artfully wrought remains of ancient classical literature.

In our times, the zeal to which we refer has become more common, more general, than in past generations. Readers out of the student's hall, and never dreaming of making a book, a lecture, or