attempted. If we trace back our history to the cradle of the commonwealth, we find that after liberty of conscience, the first thing needful, the understanding must be enlightened, and the means of education provided; in order that the reasoning mind, which in its liberty of conscience has acquired the right to think, may be enabled to think rightfully, liberally, and wisely. Without this preparation, strength is brute force; and numbers, wealth, and what we may call statistical prosperity, can serve only to make a valuable colony-never a hopeful commonwealth. When a revolution, then, is to take place, let it, according to the great example of our fathers, begin far back with that which is the glory of human nature,-the calm, decided energetic operation of the reason of the people; diffusively, in the common sense of the mass; eminently, in the strong conviction of the gifted minds. A just and hopeful political reform must first disclose itself, as such, in this way; for reason, deciding, reflective reason, is the great glory of our nature; and that which makes one mortal being superior to another, and nearer the immortal and Supreme, is the elevation and correctness of his intelligence.

When by education the mind of the country is prepared; when the faculties of the gifted few are prepared to lead, and of the intelligent mass to follow, then, in a well-conducted revolution, ensues the purest and chastest operation of intellect, that by which the rights of the people and the duties of the crisis are, in the various forms of written discourse, powerfully set forth and brought home to the community, and made familiar to its members. After the unexpressed, the inexpressible, the purely ethereal operations of mind, that which approaches nearest to them is the silent voice of reason, in the retire ment of the closet. It does not supersede, it awakens the independent action of other minds. It suggests the theme, but affords space for meditation, for qualification, it may be, for correction. It is the most transparent veil, the most spiritual incarnation, in which the word can be made manifest. Here, too, is the highest test of comparative merit which man can apply. Of the inward exercises of pure reason man cannot judge; nor how much those of one intellect exceed those of another. But when the truth of a cause and the strength of its supporters are brought to the test of a written exposition and defence, we are then furnished with the first and surest means of judging of its truth, and of the power and light with which it has been conceived and taken up. The whole history of the colonies, down to the year 1760, presents us with the illustrations of this stage of an orderly revolution.

"Lower in the scale is the agency by which the cause, thus prepared in the consciences, convictions, and reason of men, is to win its way to the favour of the less reflecting portion of the community, or to gain a majority of voices in the primary and popular assemblies. This is the agency of public speaking, an instrument less chaste indeed and intellectual than that of written discourse, yet liberal and generous in its nature. But it necessarily borrows not a little from physical accidents; it addresses a taste less severe; it looks more to the side of the passions, and less to that of the reason, and is not so necessarily the expression of native power, and independent thought. Moreover, till the understanding of the best and most solid portion of the community has been enlightened, and they are well taught in the principles of reform, it is premature to put the multitudinous assemblies in action, by the sympathetic fervour of popular eloquence. But when each of these in its place has been done; when the understandings of the people have comprehended the principles of the proposed reform, and their reason has felt its necessity; when, in the large cities or in the crowded audiences elsewhere convened, their spirits have been wrought up to a certain passionate enthusiasm, by the eloquence of fervid appeals, then they have reached what may be called the maturity of preparation. They are ripe for the reform they de mand. From the year 1760 to 1775 may be considered the period, in America, of this second stage of preparation.

"If arbitrary power be still opposed to the acknowledgment of their rights, nothing further is needed than to raise the arm of flesh,-the humble but faithful minister of the righteous will of an enlightened and enkindled people, resolved to be free. This, of course, is an agency still lower in its character, partaking of mechanical impulse, and brute violence; but ennobled by a noble cause, and necessary in the conflict with the like force, exerted in an opposite direction.

"Such is the wholesome gradation of the energies of a people, trained up in orderly discipline, to a seasonable and auspicious independence. It is of such a revolution and such an one alone, that it can be said, in any hopeful sense, Vestigia nulla retrorsum. But woe to the misguided nation that inverts the succession of the powers and talents, by which alone a great and genial efficacy in human affairs can be exerted; whose mighty masses are put prematurely in motion; whose popular assemblies are hurried into hasty and unconsidered measures; and who are obliged slowly and sadly to go back to the heavenly directress,-the counsels of calm reason,-to repair the errors, into which they had been plunged by following their passionate guides. It would be easy to point out, in the history of the French revolution, a complete contrast to the American, and to show that the prosperous issue of one and the disastrous miscarriages of the other proceeded from a complete inversion of the natural order of the talents, by which a movement ought to be given to political affairs. It is necessary, to avoid misconception, to add, that the talents of written discourse, popular eloquence, and physical action do not necessarily exist alone, each exclusively of the others. There are rare instances, where they are all united. They were eminently so in Julius Cæsar, who wanted nothing but good moral qualities, to make him the paragon of humanity; being, as he was, the most elegant writer, the happiest popular speaker, and the ablest general in Rome. Less rare are the cases where two of the three great qualities are united in the same individual. We have compared them above only as possessed, and brought into operation, singly and each exclusively of the others; that is, as much so as any one quality of rational man can be exclusive of all the others."

Article sixth, on Washington Irving's Life of Columbus, is very ably and gracefully written; and, considering that it is the performance of a writer who frankly professes himself to be a personal friend of Mr. Irving, and therefore unavoidably somewhat of an ultra in his admiration of that gentleman, may be deemed, upon the whole, a fair and moderate effusion. It is to be sure violently national, as the whole number is, and will probably be thought by many to throw too much of the couleur de rose into both its retrospect and its anticipation of American literature: but this is no more than we ought to expect and to make allowance for. We regret, for our own parts, that we are too little familiar with the poetical productions either of Mr. Barlow, General Humphreys, or Doctor Timothy Dwight, the three sires, it would seem, of the minstrelsy of the United States, to be able to say whether or no they deserve the patriotic commendations here bestowed upon them. Mr. Irving's works, however, we know tolerably well, and, making due abatement for the operation of the circumstance we have mentioned, we are content to subscribe to nearly all that is said by this writer of the merits of what he has already done. His language is remarkable, we agree, for “ a continual and sustained elegance," although not for " energy," nor the frequent occurrence of " "any extraordinary happiness or brilliancy of mere expression." It is quite true, also, we think, that he has not much of a philosophical mind, that his

works contain no instance of an attempt at the sublime; that it is humour which is obviously his forte, while "his purely pathetic essays, though occasionally pleasing, are more generally somewhat tame and spiritless ;" and that, as a writer of serious biography and history, he possesses the merit of plain and elegant narrative, but does not aspire to the higher palm of just and deep thought in the investigation of causes and effects, that constitutes the distinction of the real historian." To all this, we repeat, which is a summary, almost in his own words, of what the reviewer describes as "the general characteristics of the style and substance of the works of Mr. Irving," we are quite willing to assent. But really, we see nothing in the qualities here enumerated to entitle even his personal friend to anticipate, as is done in a succeeding page, that Mr. Irving's fame may probably be yet destined to rise to an equality with, or superiority over, that of both Moore and Scott,- -on no better grounds than that the "Life of Columbus" has been, it seems, a more successful publication, or is in reality a better book, than either the Sheridan of the one, or the Napoleon of the other; and that the two European writers have already done their best, while the talent of the American “seems to be still in a state of progress." Even allowing the case as to these matters to be as it is stated, we confess we think the conclusion arrived at, one of the wildest we ever recollect seeing seriously maintained anywhere. For, be it observed, that it is not as biographers only that our two illustrious countrymen are here quoted as likely to be at some future time surpassed by Mr. Irving; as such, they are conceived to have been completely surpassed by him already; and the thing that is expressly anticipated, is, that his fame is in the end to eclipse that which they now enjoy, considered generally as authors and men of genius:-one of them standing, almost by universal confession, at the head of the world's living literature! Really this is one of the best jokes American vanity has yet supplied us with. A prophet, it is said, has no honour in his own country; but if the seer to whom we are indebted for this bright vision be rejected at home, his lot may be considered as rather an unfortunate one-for we are sure he will be laughed at every where else.

The concluding paper is devoted to a review of Duke Bernhard of Saxe-Weimar's lately published Travels in North America. In this article too we have not a little of the sensitive vanity of the national character. The Duke's somewhat dull performance is treated gently enough; and we believe the greater part is extracted of what it contains worth reading. It is remarked, with a sneer, that on taking up his abode at the Exchange Coffee-house in Boston, "it does not even occur to him to jest at finding a colonel in an innkeeper." Now, for our own parts, we really hold our brother Jonathan in great respect, and certainly should never be moved seriously to think the less of him in consequence of its being no uncommon speculation for his field officers to open public houses in the interval of their campaigns: such, it seems, is the military etiquette in the country, and that is all. But really, with our conceptions and associations touching colonels and tavern-keepers, it is too much to expect that we should not smile at the exquisitely bizarre notion of any one gravely officiating in both capacities: it is positively, to our imaginations, a plurality of a singularly

comical cast. Perhaps our wiser brother is above all these weaknesses of the old world: to him it might seem perfectly fit and becoming for the president himself, if so it like him, to eke out his income by taking a needle in his hand and mending his neighbour's old clothes at his leisure moments. It is an honest occupation, and well suited, from the lightness of the labour, for a few hours of evening industry, by way of supplement to the heavier toils of the day. But, although this may possibly be the view that pure reason and our brother Jonathan would take of the matter, we are free to confess, that to our frailer and less philosophical humanity it will present itself, do what we can, in a somewhat different light. We must be allowed to smile, if we should die for it, at such curious violations of our accustomed ideas of relation and incongruity; but we mean no harm to any body by our innocent levity, unless, indeed, it be intended to put an end to the sense of the ridiculous altogether. We do not see upon what principle these same innkeeping colonels are to be held sacred from an occasional joke.

But, in truth, our good cousins are much too touchy as to these matters. They evidently regard all the rest of the world as joined in a conspiracy to laugh at them, and keep themselves in a perpetual fever by expecting nothing else than a fresh insult from every one that notices them. Now the fact is, as far as we can observe, that they are quite as ready to note the faults and foibles of their neighbours, and to plume themselves on any decided superiority they may fancy they have over the other nations of the earth, as any people that ever existed. We need go no further for evidence of this, than to the article before us. How delighted, for example, is the writer to be able to quote the good duke's averment, that the "houses and rooms of the Bostonians are much larger, richer, better lighted, and more airy than the English;" and a little after his other remark, that when among the Oneida Indians he first thought himself in civilized Europe because children came up to the carriage to beg. And how high a tone of dudgeon, on the other hand, does he take at even the shadow of an imputation on any man, woman, or thing that has the honour of being American. See the indignant, but we must say rather lumbering, apology for the negro slavery of the southern states; and the manner in which the white inhabitants there hold themselves entitled to treat their darker coloured fellow-countrymen. See, too, the dignified rebuke administered to the duke for daring to call in question the taste of the Pennsylvanians in the fine arts. He had ventured to assert of West's picture of Christ healing the Sick, that neither the composition nor execution of it seemed good; adding, "perhaps it is only here where they are unaccustomed to see great and well-executed paintings, that this would excite the great admiration it has done." "This," remarks the reviewer," is saying too much. It would have been quite enough to deny the merit of the picture, without denying the competency of its admirers to judge at all."

There are several other able and interesting articles in the number, which we cannot afford to notice:-and upon the whole it is impossible not to regard this periodical in its present state as exceedingly creditable to the rising literature of America.

A VISIT TO HAZELWOOD SCHOOL.

To the EDITOR of the "London Magazine."

My dear, I have at length put into practice my long-formed intention of going to see Hazelwood; and I sit down to give you an account of my visit, which I hope you will think suited to your magazine. I have often wondered, indeed, that no one has ever given such an account to the world, considering the sudden celebrity Hazelwood acquired some years ago by the publication of the account of the system, coupled with the general notice given to it by all the chief literary journals of the time. The success of the school had long been steady and strong, but it now came into general notoriety, and gave rise to much controversy, its supporters being those who really looked into and studied its principles, and thence saw their necessary results; while its opposers were, for the most part, those who, whenever they hear of any thing in the shape of amendment, immediately cry out "Innovation!" a word which they really have, by dint of misusing, corrupted from its original sense; for to most ears it now conveys what those worthy gentlemen actually think a part of it, namely, Innovation for the worse.

I am quite aware that persons of this class will say that the following statement is written by a partisan of Hazelwood School: that I am such a partisan I at once admit, but I have become so solely from the attention I have paid to the system, and thence from my firm conviction of the logical necessity of such a system working the noblest good. If the merits of the establishment itself have made me its partisan, the word should be used in its real, and not in its invidious,

sense.

The first thing that must strike any visitor to Hazelwood who looks on attentively, is the constant and perfect working of some of the finest principles of human nature; yet to the majority of the boys it is of course unconsciously effected, and certainly without the least didactic formality or ostentatious display. The older boys, no doubt, upon whose minds these principles have been acting for years, trace at last the effects to their causes, and learn to value and to love them accordingly. But this arises from no pedantic precepts laid down without immediate application; on the contrary, the results of true principle cause the mind to run back till it arrives at the precept which they at once spring from, illustrate, and render of value. This is another illustration of the great Hazelwood principle of more direct tuition, of which, very possibly, even its directors have not observed the application in this instance. In their account of the best mode of teaching languages, we find the following:- We would store the mind of the learner with many examples, before we call upon him to classify them, and deduce from them rules and general principles." How much better this mode is for the acquisition of language than the old one, I shall probably have occasion to notice as I go along. But it is equally

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