From the perusal of these flowers of rhetoric | nian was an instinct, and with an Englishman is we rise with feelings, on the whole, of disappoint- the result of breeding-with such an audience ment. We expected to find a marked superiority eloquence must needs grow meretricious, and sink over parallel passages from speeches in our own into rant and fustian. This, we fear, seems the House of Commons; such as should correspond Charybdis of American rhetoric. to the mental superiority of men, freely chosen Eloquence, we are persuaded, will never flourfrom, and by, the great body of the people, and ish in America or at home, so long as the public who for the most part owe their position to their taste is infantile enough to measure the value of own talents and exertions, over men placed in a speech by the hours it occupies, and to exalt their seats by the accidents of birth, or fortune, or copiousness and fertility to the absolute disregard connection. In this country, political eloquence is of conciseness. The efficacy and value of comconfessedly at a low ebb. The general indiffer-pression can scarcely be overrated. The common ence to party-politics, which men begin to look air we beat aside with our breath, compressed, has upon as a mere scramble for place; the practical the force of gunpowder, and will rend the solid and somewhat cold temperament of the English rock; and so it is with language. A gentle stream people; and the aristocratic prejudices which nar- of persuasiveness may flow through the mind and row the field of political competition, are unfavor-leave no sediment; let it come at a blow, as a able circumstances. The best speeches of our cataract, and it sweeps all before it. It is by this greatest orators are with difficulty read, and make magnificent compression that Cicero confounds but a feeble impression, even while the subject- Catiline, and Demosthenes overwhelms Æschines; matter of them retains its freshness. None of our by this that Mark Antony, as Shakspeare makes statesmen can expect that, like Burke or Chat- him speak, carries the heart away with a bad ham, his words will live after him, and be studied cause; by this that Lady Macbeth makes us, for when the occasion that drew them forth shall be the moment, sympathize with murder. The lanforgotten, for their wisdom or their eloquence. guage of strong passion is always terse and comThe interest of the subjects is not more short-lived pressed; genuine conviction uses few words; there and transient than is the oratory itself: it is not is something of artifice and dishonesty in a long amber that encrusts these straws. But we are speech. No argument is worth using, because disappointed to find that the same thing is true none can make a deep impression, that does not with regard to America. Webster, indeed, is bear to be stated in a single sentence. Our marmasculine and impressive; Clay, persuasive, win- shalling of speeches, essays, and books, according ning, and pathetic; Calhoun, philosophic: all to their length-deeming that a great work which three speak like men of talents and information, covers a great space; this "inordinate appetite but an air of common-place is upon even these, for printed paper," which devours so much and so the princes of American rhetoric. As foreigners, indiscriminately that it has no leisure for fairly we can pronounce with the impartiality of pos- tasting anything; is pernicious to all kinds of litterity. Divested of interest in the subjects, we erature, but fatal to oratory. The writer who should be able to judge whether the manner in aims at perfection, is forced to dread popularity which these speakers handle them is such as will and steer wide of it; the orator, who must court bear the touch of time; and the insupportable popularity, is forced to renounce the pursuit of weariness with which we read, proves, we think, genuine and lasting excellence, that it will not.

From the troubled waters of politics, we move The fact is, public speaking, far more than any onward to more tranquil regions. In jurisprubranch of closet literature, requires for its devel- dence, America undoubtedly has done much that opment a correspondence between the taste and is admirable. No English law-book, we have temperament of the speaker and of the auditory. understood, can be placed in the same rank with An author in his library can despise and forget Judge Story's Commentaries-works which even the tastes of the day, and imagine himself the co- in this country are much studied, and often refertemporary of Plato, or Cicero, or Bacon, and tune red to as authorities. The philosophical spirit in his mind to their pitch, and write with weight and which these books are written, the perpetual regravity, as addressing himself to hearers "fit currence to first principles, the absence of a petty though few." In the court-house or the senate, technicality, contrast very favorably with some of the powerful influence of man's presence puts such the most admired productions of English lawyers. thoughts to flight the speaker is forced to bring American law would seem to be less the slave of his mind into contact with those that he addresses; precedent than the English; a circumstance no he is at the mercy of his audience; and, if he doubt owing, in a great measure, to the diversity cannot raise their tempers to the loftiness of his of laws in the several states of the Union, which, own, his must sink to theirs. Erskine, it is necessarily bringing an American lawyer, acquaintwell known, could not speak with effect if any one ed with several systems of legislation, alike in of his jurymen remained stolid and unmoved. their first principles, yet diverging in particulars And, if eloquence is cold and tame with a phleg- of practice, forces upon him a perpetual attention matic audience, with an uncultivated audience, to the distinction, so often lost sight of by English greedy of coarse food and strong excitement, de- lawyers, between fundamentals and details. Jurisvoid of the mental temperance that with an Athe- prudence, however, is a subject that hardly claims

our notice, since it seems improper to treat it as a it seems impossible to set much store by it. The branch of literature.

The same thing may be said of natural philosophy, which Mr. Griswold likewise descants upon. We shall content ourselves with extracting what appears to us a judicious observation on the subject.

The cultivation of purely mechanical and natural science has been carried much too far in this country, or rather has been made too exclusive and absorbing. It is not the highest science, for it concerns only that which is around us-which is altogether outward. Man is greater than the world of nature in which he lives, and just as clearly must the science of man, the philosophy of his moral and intellectual being, rank far above that of the soulless creation which was made to minister to his wants. When, therefore, this lower science so draws to itself the life of any age as to disparage and shut out the higher, it works to the wellbeing of that age an injury.-p. 26.

first and obvious business of the novelist is, to tell an amusing or interesting story; this alone is his peculiar province; and if certain gifted minds have embellished and dignified this task with jewels borrowed from the wardrobe of poetry or philosophy, it may perhaps be said that in so doing they have wandered out of their sphere, and ceased to be mere novelists. Now, without being ungrateful to those who tell us interesting stories-nay, while acknowledging that to be thus carried out of ourselves may sometimes be useful and improving, we must still maintain that the story-teller is not our best and most honorable preceptor. We value one original reflection above twenty original tales, as well for its intrinsic usefulness as for the power of mind which it evinces. Novel writing, then, whether we consider its ordinary fruits, or its distinctive end and purpose, must, as compared with other departments of letters, rank low.

Of American laborers in this field, two only can be said to have an European reputationWashington Irving and Cooper. The author of the "Sketch Book," whom Hazlitt contemptuously calls "a mere filagree man," frequently pleases by touches of quaint humor and a natural sentiment at times bordering on the pathetic. Of Cooper's earlier works we have a grateful remembrance, which a maturer judgment strives against in vain. Mr. Cooper has in a high degree, we think, two of the chief excellencies of Sir Walter Scott; his writings affect the imagination like pictures, and he has the rare art of carrying the reader's attention forward with a lively and vigorous movement; while, on the other hand, bis judgment is the slave of prejudice, his moralizing very common-place, and we read without growing the better or the wiser. As for the illustrious obscure whose names have not crossed the Atlantic, it must suffice to notice their existence in the following extract from Mr. Griswold's book :

Passing over the small wares of literature, as pamphlets, review articles, essays on manners, and fugitive pieces, serious or humorous, in which matters it may be that America neither can nor cares to compete with the mother country, there only remains for our notice the region of fiction. Considering how highly it is the fashion to prize this branch of letters, it may seem improper to place it at the bottom of the list. Undoubtedly, one or two great works in this department seem to prove that novel writing may be used as the medium for conveying almost all the lessons that formerly were only to be learnt from the philosopher or the poet. The essential part of philosophy is its teaching us new truths concerning our own nature; and whether this be done by a didactic treatise or in the form of narrative, matters little the young and indolent may prefer the more entertaining method, while graver minds will be for the more direct, complete, and systematic; but the nature of the instruction is the same for both. The essential part of poetry, again, is certainly not the versification; that-except so far as the dwelling upon the thoughts which it requires, or the delight which it inspires, may react upon the mind of the poet, and stimulate it to loftier flights -is but a form and accident of poetry. The essence of poetry, whatever it be—for it is a thing hard to define-may, and often does, exist in conjunction with the form of prose narration. It would be unreasonable to deny that some of Mr. Dickens' works, for instance, contain much poetry. Considering, then, that a novel may be a philosophy, that it may be an epic, it seems hard Having thus glanced through the several deto treat this as the lowest species of composition. partments of American literature, we have but a But, on the other hand, it may be said with jus- few words to say on its aspect, considered as a tice, that in assigning rank to any large and mis- whole. We find in it two conflicting tendencies. cellaneous class of things, we must be guided, The one, setting up foreign standards of excellence, not by its possibilities, but by its ordinary and av-imitating with exaggeration the prominent features erage products; and, viewing the matter in this light, novel writing, a field that lies open to all, and whose fruits may be gathered with less of labor and previous tillage than any other kind, is so overrun with the poorer sort of laborers, that

The field of romantic fiction has for a quarter of a century been thronged with laborers. I do not know how large the national stock may be, but I have in my own library more than seven hundred volumes of novels, tales, and romances, by American writers. Comparatively few of them are of so poor a sort as to be undeserving of a place in any general collection of our literature. Altogether they are not below the average of English novels for this present century; and the proportion which is marked by a genuine originality of manner, purpose, and feeling, is much larger than they who have not read them are aware.-p. 28.

of English literature, careful above all things to shun extravagance, leads writers, in their admiration of precision and elegance, to the verge of tameness. The other, which seems the natural expression of the American character, is a tendency to admire

to his own temporal dominions. But in 1559, Paul IV. resolved to frame a catalogue on the most rigid principles, and make its observance universal. This tained the names of authors whose whole works were Inder was arranged in three divisions. The first coninterdicted. The second embraced the names of those

all that is high-flown and energetic; and hence to run occasionally into an "Ercles' vein," more amusing than edifying. This latter tendency, with all its dangers, appears to us the more native, spontaneous, and likely to thrive; and we must look to this as the germ of a true American liter-authors some of whose works only were specified and ature. We are to recollect that America has some forbidden. The third pointed out certain anonymous predominance of Irish blood in its veins; and even publications which were unlawful to be read. To were it not so, every people, in the earlier stages which was added a list of more than sixty printers of their development, possess more of enthusiasm whose publications were all forbidden, no matter in than refined taste. An Eschylus must always they treated. This was the origin and foundation of what language they were printed, or what subject precede an Euripides. And, though it is true that the famous Index Expurgatorius, by which Rome has America is open to all the influences of Europe, striven to reduce the world to the darkness of the midand has the means of imbibing the most modern dle ages. The condemned books were doomed to the fashions as they spring up, in literature, as in other flames; and severe penalties were decreed against things, it is not the less necessary that her native those who should neglect to give them up. The proliterature must go through the process of a growth tion throughout Italy; but notwithstanding the relucmulgation of this barbarous decree spread consternafrom the first bud. The literature of every inde-tance and hesitation manifested in certain quarters, pendent nation, it would seem, is so bound up with the work of destroying heretical books commenced all its national peculiarities, that it must have a and went bravely on in all parts of that country root of its own; and though it may emulate the All libraries, public and private, felt the expurgating full-grown plants around it, and spring up the faster progress. An immense number of books were confor their shelter, and be enriched by the drippings sumed. The trade of the printers and booksellers was ruined. The disastrous effects were felt not from their sprays, yet must it derive its sustenance only at Venice, where so many books had for a from its native soil. In England, the necessity century been published, but also at Lyons, at Genfor such an internal development, gradually pro-eva, at Zurich, at Basle, at Paris, at Leipzic, and ceeding from a crude and feeble infancy, has not at Frankfort-on-the-Maine. been obviated by the continual presence of classic models, though made the chief study of our youth. In America, the masterpieces of modern English letters can scarcely be expected to produce a more powerful influence over the literature of the land,rian, Jerome, and Augustine, which he published, than have the writings of Cicero or Xenophon over ours; though the language be the same, the tone of mind is equally foreign. The literature of the United States, then, must grow up with the national character of the United States, and its nature must be the counterpart of that. And as we are not disposed here to enter upon the wide and perhaps insoluble question, What is to be the destiny of the United States, and what the national character? -we must be content to leave the prospects of her literature in obscurity. At present we discern nothing, whether in the public acts of the union, or its literature, but the petulance, the crude energies, the inharmonious blending of strength and weakness, which characterize an immature age; together with a certain gigantic expansiveness, that seems to promise one day to outgrow everything European, and leave us far behind. It would be unreasonable, then, to deduce an unfavorable omen for American literature in times to come, from the comparative poverty and scantiness of its products as exhibited in the volume before us. R. L.

THE FIRST INDEX EXPURGATORIUS.-That most narrow-minded and bigoted monarch, Charles V., has the honor, or infamy rather, of being the author of the first Inder Erpurgatorius. In the year 1546 being desirous of arresting the progress of the new opinions in Flanders, he directed the theological faculty of the University of Louvain to draw up a catalogue of such books as ought not to be read by the people. Ten years later, this catalogue was by an imperial decree much enlarged. The pope did something of the same sort, but only with reference

Not only were the books which had been written by Protestants, and by those who were suspected of favoring the new opinions, destroyed, but even those which contained the works of Erasmus, and also the editions of Cypany notes or scholia written by such persons. All

were condemned, because they were polluted with his critical annotations. Upon the death of Paul IV. a new Index was published by the Council of Trent, which was more select and discriminating. It included a great number of Protestant authors, but it omitted some Popish ones, whose sentiments were so familiar to those of the Protestants on certain points, that they had been put into the first Index. From this epoch commenced the barbarous practice of defacing and mutilating those portions of certain works which were considered worthy of condemnation. This was sometimes done by besmearing the heretical page with some black adhesive substance, which rendered it illegible. Sometimes the prohibited portions of a work were covered with prints taken from other works, so as to present a most wonderful appearance. Sometimes the condemned pages, or parts of pages, were wholly or partially torn out.-Dr. Baird's Sketches of Protestantism in Italy.

DISCOVERY OF MUMMIES AT DURANGO, MEXICO. -The Texas Star states that a million mummies have been discovered on the environs of Durango, in Mexico. They are in a sitting posture, but have the same wrappings, bands, and ornaments as the Egyptians. Among them was found a sculptured head with a poignard of flint, chaplets, neck-laces, &c., of alternated colored beads, fragments of bone polished like ivory, fine worked elastic tissues, (probably our modern India rubber cloth,) moccasins worked like those of our Indians to-day, bones of vipers, &c. It remains to continue these interesting researches, and America will become another Egypt to antiquaries, and her ruins will go back to the oldest period of the world, showing doubtless that the ancestors of the Montezumas lived on the Nile.

From Chambers' Journal.
THE FISHER'S WIDOW.

In the early part of November, 184-, during one of those short but violent gales of such frequent occurrence on the north-east coast of Scotland, an event took place which is unhappily so common on our stormy shores as to create but a passing sensation, unless circumstances arise to bring it more immediately under our view. The facts were these:

as the bark heeled over on the returning surge, another and another swept into her one smothered shriek-and she is gone!

Those on shore-oh, with what beating hearts! had watched the gallant but unequal struggle; and now a wild scream arose from many voices, and above all was heard the despairing cry of the young wife—so soon to be widow-as she sank insensible on the shore. But the boat rises!-she has righted! No: she rises indeed, but keel uppermost; and where are they, so lately straining every manly sinew, and flushed with the struggle for dear life? Twice the waves carry under the devoted bark; but she rises again; and oh! this time there are living forms clinging to her keel ! and three strong men are seen supporting their helpless and insensible old father. By this time a small boat, manned by two noble-hearted fellows, who have ventured in the face of almost certain death, in the hope of rescuing their comrades, has neared them; the waves, too, seem pausing to contemplate their work of destruction. There

Early in the morning, a boat manned by five of the "fisher folk" of a father and four sons, went two or three miles out to sea, in pursuance of their constant occupation after the close of the herring season-fishing for haddock, whiting, &c. There was a stiff breeze blowing from the northwest-but such as these hardy men have so frequently to encounter, as to be rendered often too careless of its danger—and nothing appeared to threaten a storm. However, with the sun, as is frequently the case, rose the wind; and with the wind, in a space of time incredibly short to those who have not witnessed it, rose the wild waves, is a momentary lull, during which the four men so rolling in with a deafening sound upon the iron- wonderfully rescued are placed in the little boat by bound coast, which speedily became encircled by a their deliverers, the old man to all appearance a belt of white surf, reaching many yards out from corpse. But where is the fifth-the youngest the shore, and amid which it was impossible for a born-the pride of his father's heart? Alas! in boat to live. The fishers perceived the change in vain do the gallant fellows linger among the foamthe weather, and differed in opinion as to the ing breakers till every hope has fled, and their own course they should adopt. Some were for re- imminent danger forces them from the spot. He maining on the open sea, where, unless the storm is gone; and when the speedily-subsiding waters became very severe, they were in comparative safe- (for the storm did not last above four hours) perty; but the old father and his youngest and favor-mitted a search to be made for the boat, a corpse ite son urged their immediate return, as the season was found, wrapped in the sail as in a windingwas too far advanced to permit of any certain reliance on the various prognostics, so well known to the fishers of the coast, which seemed to announce that the gale would have but a short duration. Their counsel carried the day, for all loved and respected their father; and the young George, the only one of the brothers who had a wife and children, represented that it was due to the helpless ones dependent on him to run no avoidable risk. So the boat's head was turned to land, and the furious gale urged her onwards with fearful speed. Yet to this the hardy men were well accustomed; and they guided her safely, so as to avoid the breaking waters, till they reached the entrance of the bay in which the town of is situated, and which by this time presented an appalling spectacle indeed to those who knew their only chance of life lay through those furious and foaming waters.

sheet. He had evidently made a gallant struggle for life; for a clasp-knife was found clenched in his dying grasp, and the sail was partly ripped open; but its deadly folds had encircled him too firmly, and the choking waters did the rest.

I heard a lamentable account of the despair of the poor young widow, thus deprived of the companion of her life, and the sole means of support for herself and her three infants, and I was anxious to visit her; but my trusty Jean, whom I had despatched with offers of service to the bereaved family, dissuaded me from it.

"Eh, mem," she said, "dinna gang, dinna gang. She kens maistly naebody, puir thing, and it's awfu to see her greet; and she's whiles no sensible forby, and canna thole onybody near her."

So I waited to hear that the first violence of her despair had worn itself out, for I very much doubted my own powers of consolation; and who Still they held on their course, and the little but One, indeed, could console in such grief as vessel rode gallantly; five minutes more of their hers? However, after a time, I heard she had swift and perilous career, and the harbor would been partly brought to her senses by the illness of have been gained. But it was not so to be. her baby, who, deprived of its natural sustenance Rapidly they neared a dark and dangerous reef of by the blow that had shaken the very heart-strings rocks in the middle of the bay. Vainly were of its poor mother, had been at the point of death. strength, and skill, and energy exerted to turn the However, it was now better; and the young little vessel from the fearful barrier ahead; the widow, recalled to the consciousness that there exwhole force of the Northern Ocean, in its wildest isted yet a greater depth of anguish than that in mood, was opposed to their efforts; a mighty which her reason had almost forsaken her, became wave carried them almost on to the reef; and calmer and more composed, at least in outward ap

pearance; and hearing this, I set out one day, I earnestly, but in subdued tones.
about three weeks after the fatal accident, to visit
her.

It was in the beginning of December; yet the weather in this fitful climate takes no heed of the ancient division of the seasons, and the day was bright and balmy as in early spring. It seems to me as if nature had assigned to these northern regions as many fine days, or nearly so, during the year, as fall to the portion of happier climates; but they are in some mysterious manner so strangely jumbled, that many a wintry day chills us in the midst of summer, while those belonging to a more genial season sometimes make their appearance unexpectedly among the blasts and frosts of autumn or winter. One of these stray children of summer was gilding and beautifying the wild country through which I had to pass, on my way to the little fishing-town of

Not thinking

that this had any connection with the object of my visit, I knocked at the low door, and an elderly woman, the mother of the dead man, appeared.

"Eh, mem, but it's real gude o' you to come and see us in our sorrow-come ben to the fire;" and she busied herself in placing a chair for me in the kitchen, where a peat fire, burning in an open lum, which allowed more than half the smoke to find its way into the room, rendered it so dark, that I had seated myself before I perceived, close to me in the "ingle neuk," the figure apparently of a young girl, who, loosely wrapped in a darkblue bed-gown, with her long dark hair half concealing her face, was sitting on a low stool, and holding a little infant in her arms, over which she was murmuring a faint sound that might have been a fragment of song.

"'Deed an' it's a sair day wi' her the day. No but a' days are sair and heavy noo; but ye see they 're roupin' puir Geordie's bits o' nets an' sielike, an' it aye brings back the sorrow upon her." "Can I see her?" I said.

66

The level I started at finding myself unexpectedly so close beams of a December sun threw a rich golden to another person, and the girl fixed a pair of large light over a large extent of bare but highly-culti- dark eyes steadfastly upon me for a moment, and vated country; the plough was merrily a-field then dropping her head again on her bosom, reamong the stubble, the lark was singing high in sumed her low chant. I turned to the woman who the clear air, and the smoke ascended from many was standing near me, and said, "I called to see a humble hearth, and scarcely wavered in its up- poor Jessie-how is she?" ward course, while the scene was bounded by the blue and waveless ocean, dotted here and there with a white sail; and in the far distance, the outline of the hills of Caithness stood out sharp and defined against the cloudless sky. As I neared the sea, and caught a fuller view of the coast, the whole of the Moray Firth opened before me in a panorama scarcely to be surpassed on British shores. But I thought little of these familiar scenes as I drove on; my thoughts were bent on the errand I had undertaken; and as I slowly descended the precipitous road leading to the picturesque seaport of I tried to arrange in my mind a few consolatory sentences, feeling all the while how ineffectual my own happy experience would render aught I could say to soothe such sorrow as I was about to witness-for heart must speak to heart in grief; and if the corresponding chord have not been awakened in our own bosom, it is in vain we strive to calm the throb of anguish which vibrates to agony in the breast of another. So I resolved to speak only the words that should suggest themselves at the moment, and to attempt nothing

more.

The little town of is very remarkably situated nestling, as it were, under high and beetling crags, which scarcely leave room for the cottages of the fishermen to stand, dotted here and there in picturesque confusion, under the precipitous cliff. The one to which I bent my steps stood on a high bank leading up from a terrace bulwark, which had been built to resist the encroachments of the mighty waters, now slumbering, with scarce a ripple on their surface, in the broad bay before me. As I turned to ascend some steps leading to the door, I saw a gathering of many persons, and ropes, nets, fishing-boots, and gear of that description lying on the green, round which the crowd had assembled, talking

Surely, mem, surely. She's there out-by!" An indescribable feeling came over me as I turned to the poor creature, and again met her steadfast gaze. I tried to speak, but a choking sensation in my throat told me the attempt would be vain; and for a moment nothing was heard in the cottage but that low crooning sound-the wail of a broken heart.

"She's quite quiet noo, mem, an' sensible,” said the mother, who I fancied attributed my emotion to fear of the poor creature. "She hasna grat ony sin' the bairnie took ill: but she's a hantle better noo;" and then I saw that the poor baby was attempting to find the nourishment of which its mother's agony had deprived it.

"She is a healthy-looking little baby," said I, feeling I must say something; and taking the tiny hand in mine, "How old is she?"

"Ten weeks, mem. She was seven weeks the day her father went."

Another glance from those dark eyes; but no sound except the low moaning song.

"It is a heavy trial, indeed," I said, speaking more to my own thoughts than to those near me. "A heavy and bitter trial; but she will have her children to look to, and she will not want for friends;" and I felt at the moment as if I could almost have gone down to the deep myself to have given back to that poor creature the one light of her lowly life.