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Of painted warrior hath thy green leaves stirred;
And thou hast seen the tortured captive die
Laughing his foes to scorn in agony;
Thou hast beheld the weaker tribe before

The stronger melt away, and these to fly
Before some mightier band, till savage gore

Nor these alone; but thou hast seen a tide

Of fiercer warfare in the valley swell,
When bowed the forest tenant in his pride;
Then, where the densely towering forest fell,
Uprose the white man's cottage in the dell;
The ripened grain waved o'er the field of blood;

know that as long as you are good, God will be ever thus to you; but if you forsake him, he will bring you into trouble, and leave you with none to save or to comfort you." Turning his eyes again upon Esther, whose countenance, brightened with animation and suffused with unusual color, pre-Hath reddened every sod and poured the valley o'er. sented the aspect of an exquisitely beautiful boy in a soldier's dress, he gave way to the happiest burst of laughter. Esther, who, in her excess of joy, had totally forgotten her comic dress, wondered at his unusual merriment, til after several relapses of this mer,y mood, he said to her, "you almost persuade me to wish you had been a boy, your dress becomes you so, you lovely cherub." Now recollecting her male apparel, she colored with confusion and rushed from the room to throw it off. The old men now held a council on the present course to be pursued, and determined to flee to some distant place of refuge and lie concealed till pursuit should be given over. Therefore, making a transfer of their cumbrous property to the Jews about them, they hastened from the city, and before morning were far beyond the reach of Haman.

[To be Continued.]

The war whoop died where pealed the Sabbath bell;

Vanished his race upon th' o'erwhelming flood;
And spire and dome arose where once the wigwam stood.
Lo! he whose girdle checks thy life-blood's flow-
On yonder hill behold his cabin rise!
His sounding axe hath laid the forest low

And oped the thicket to the glowing skies!
Old woodland King, make way for Enterprise !
The wilderness hath smiled-its teeming soil
Vast hoarded treasures unto him supplies—
Bow down, old Oak, to Industry and Toil-
To Freedom's pioneer-thou art the woodman's spoil!
Memphis Tenn.

THE GIRDLED OAK.

BY W. N. STANTON.

Oak of a thousand years! thou that hast stood,
Ere yet the white man lingered in thy shade,
For centuries the patriarch of the wood,
And with thy many giant arms arrayed
Athwart the sky, hast with the whirlwind played;
Old Forest King! thy sceptre falleth now,
And thy long reign is o'er! The axe is laid

Unto thy root-seasons shall come and go,

THE LEGAL PROFESSION.

BY THE EDITOR.

"Hail, sacred Polity, by Freedom reared!
Hail, sacred Freedom, when by Law restrained!”

Nearly the whole of every community may be divided into lawyers and those who employ them. A chapter on lawyers may, therefore, be not unacceptable.

The present high character and influential position of the legal profession, are too well known to re

Yet spring shall never deck with garb of green thy brow!quire or justify comment upon them. According to

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His eyrie in thy boughs, no more shall come
To rear his nurslings in thy shadow here;

The squirrel hath forsook his hollow home;
And mournfully around thy leafless dome,
That erst resounded to the varied lay

Of tuneful birds, the sighing wind doath roam,
Stripping the acorns from thy limbs away,

the opinions of some very observant and philosophical minds, its members exert a very salutary influence upon the affairs and institutions of our republic. But this has been denied, and demagogism has sometimes, in its recklessness, identified them with the opponents, yea enemies, of the true interests of their country. For this purpose, they have

Which soon may spring from earth and view thy slow decay. been held up as having no solid interest in the

Here, rooted in thy rock, old towering tree,
O'erlooking far through smiling vales of green
Dark Mississippi rolling to the sea-

In thy long life, what mighty change hath been!
The prowling panther, from his leafy screen
Amid thy branches, waited for the doe
That browsing on the river bank was seen;
The tired warrior laid aside his bow
And rested in thy shade secure from far-off foe.

The merry voice of Indian girls was heard

In their wild sports beneath thee; the fierce cry

State, like that of the "hard-fisted yeomanry," and branded as those who "live by their wits." Glorious, heaven-inherited capital! The best and often sole birthright of the greatest benefactors of the human race! Without trenching upon party politics, in the least, I will here introduce a few remarks upon this subject, which are only applicable to poliucs in its general aspects.

Certain it is, that the wise and cautious framers of our constitution feared those downward and disorganizing tendencies, that had most dangerously

exhibited themselves in the experience of other | Some, perhaps, may deny this salutary influence free governments. Hence, in their writings and to the legal profession, or even dislike this alleged debates, they used many expressions of distrust and tendency, as opposed to the spirit of liberty and apprehension-which to some, might now seem improvement. But we cannot concur with either gross disparagement of the wisdom and sovereignty such suggestion. M. De Tocqueville has hardly of the people—and introduced into our system many beautiful and theoretically perfect "checks and balances," calculated to keep it up to the noble republican standard which they erected. Whether the dangers and abuses apprehended by these farseeing patriots have arisen or not, all must admit that there is need of those conservative influences, to which they looked for the purity and perpetuity would his observations be wholly true. But here, of our free institutions.

exaggerated, in the least, the salutary character of the influence naturally wielded by the Bench and Bar; but he has probably overrated its extent in the United States. If the legal profession were hereditary, (as it would be senseless any where to attempt to make it,) or followed exclusively, or if many years were devoted to preparation for it; then

these are far from being the case; and he himself May there not then be in some men's pursuits seems to be aware of the difference in the situaand habits of thought and action, something well tions of the English and the American lawyer. calculated to prepare their minds for the proper ap-"The taste and reverence for what is old," which preciation of all the wise prudence which our fathers" are almost always united to a love of regular inculcated, and for the maintenance of affairs in the and lawful proceedings," are more surely and just equipoise in which they endeavored to place deeply implanted in the mind of the former than of them? Our fathers, the republican fathers of our the latter. In our country, even whilst the embryo admirable confederated system of government, are attorney is at the desk of his instructor; perhaps appealed to on all sides as having been right. Then, in the honey-moon of his pupilage; he mounts the may there not be something tending to keep certain hustings and becomes an expounder of the solemn classes of our citizens in the career in which our interests of a great people, and meddles boldly with fathers started us? This is no question for the mere great sciences on whose threshold he has hardly party politician; but for one who would inquire into entered. Thus he may prematurely commit himthe principles and operation of government. self, ere his mind is imbued with one of those conservative ideas which his profession is calculated to produce, and the influence of his legal pursuits is forestalled and counteracted by that of the "winds and waves" of party politics. If he escape this danger, he may devote too little time to the study of so extensive a subject; or blend with its practice, in itself sufficiently multifarious, too many other matters to bring his mind fully under the operation of the causes to which M. De Tocqueville has adverted; though, on the other hand, some minds may readily take this conservative hue.

One very philosophical foreign writer has taken this important question into consideration, and solved it in a very profound and lucid manner. And yet, in quoting his views, there is danger of misconstruction from the application he gives them, and the terms he employs. We have, too, seen them much perverted and wrested from their true meaning. However, what he says is, in great part, too true to be denied. He thinks that the legal profession, in the United States, is a conservative element of great efficiency.

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"Men," says M. De Tocqueville, "who have In the next place, whether these conservative, more especially devoted themselves to legal pur- stare-decisis habits and modes of thought, be favorsuits, derive from those occupations certain habits able to liberty and improvement. It may be admitof order, a taste for formalities, and a kind of in- ted that if lawyers grow up with abuses, they may stinctive regard for the regular connexion of ideas, cling to them; though even in that case, a spirit of which naturally render them very hostile to the self-interest, aided by their necessary intelligence, revolutionary spirit and unreflecting passions of the would, if they were, as in our country, identified multitude." Again he says, In a community in with the rest of the people, prompt them to seek the which lawyers are allowed to occupy, without op-removal of these abuses, which would be attended position, that high station which naturally belongs with this advantage, that, if possible, it would be to them, their general spirit will be eminently con- done peaceably and lawfully. On the other hand, servative," &c. if they grow up in the enjoyment of freedom, how And again he says, "I cannot believe that a Re- ardently will they cling to it and cherish it as vespublic could subsist at the present time, if the in-tal fire! Our birthright of freedom was a glorious fluence of lawyers in public business did not in-one; and all that we have to do is, to preserve it crease in proportion to the power of the people."

*He uses the terms "Aristocratic" and " Democratic," in their generic, philosophical sense, which has been some umes overlooked or disregarded.

+ De Tocqueville's " Democracy in America," pp. 254-7. Judge Beverly Tucker, Prof. of Law, &c., in the Univer

unimpaired. If we do, it will bless and enrich our latest posterity. For its preservation, the tendencies, dispositions and influences of the legal profession will be conducive.

sity of William and Mary, Virginia, a strong state-rights man, made this work a text book for his class.

Dick. "The first thing we do let's kill all the lawyers."

Cade. " Nay that I mean to do. Is not this a lamentable thing, that of a skin of an innocent lamb should be made parchment? that parchment, being scribbled o'er, should undo a man?"

In monarchical and aristocratical governments, The same hostility to lawyers animated the folthere may be affinities which attach lawyers to the lowers of Jack Cade in the time of Henry VI.; side of the privileged orders, and make them more and hence Shakspeare, who has held up such a true or less the advocates or vindicators of arbitary mirror to all the historic periods of which he wrote, power. But in the United States, where there are as well as to human nature in general, thus introno privileged orders, and where no man's profes-duces Cade in a dialogue with "Dick the butcher." sion, or even his social position, is beyond a very limited extent transmitted to his children, there is nothing which can possibly dispose lawyers to become the opponents of genuine liberty. Should they be found the most enlightened, influential and upright class of the community, this should rather increase confidence in them; for the successful And again, as late as 1780, in the riots of that conduct of important affairs of state requires all year in England, siege was laid to the Inns of these qualities in an eminent degree. When tur- Court, with the intention of exterminating all the bulence and anarchy arise, or when impatience of lawyers, "that the skin of an innocent lamb might lawful restraint begins to unmask itself, lawyers not be converted into an indictment." If there be will be apt to be found in the opposition; and will incur the hatred and reprobation of all who find their love of order in their way. But they will only prove their wisdom and patriotism by standing firmly by the constitution and laws, and restraining every departure from, or violation of them, though those who profess to represent the sovereign people, by whose authority and in whose name the constitution and laws were, in times of calm reflection, established, should now, from special causes, be ready to sanction an infraction of those sacred guaranties of public liberty. It would indeed be a crown of imperishable honor to them, to be always found on the side of the constitution in all assaults upon it; and upon that of law and order, in all popular disturbances, whether in Philadelphia, Rhode Island or elsewhere. If they be thoroughly imbued with the spirit of their profession and the principles of their noble science, there is every probability, that wherever they be arrayed, there will be the cause of genuine law and order.

any thing in this against the liberty of the citizen to be redressed by such means, it would be more rational and consistent to besiege and destroy the Parliament; for did not their laws require it, lawyers could not possibly convert parchment to any such use.

In the United States, as already stated, there are no alliances or affinities unfriendly to liberty, to which the legal profession are liable. They spring from the people, move among them, and are of them; no class are more identified with the people, or have so much to do for and with their public and private interests. Even were it possible for them to entertain any unjust, ambitious aims, their own children, nearest and dearest friends and relatives, engaged in all the other pursuits of an untrammelled and ever active population, must be their victims; and this would be an irresistible check. They would also be prevented from any consistency of purpose, by the fluctuations in their ranks, the diversity of individual interests and their necessary In England, in the celebrated Wat Tyler rebel-dependence upon those over whom they would be dion, in 1381, the insurgents were particularly ex- supposed desirous to tyrannize, or elevate themasperated against the lawyers. In that outbreak selves. To some, these observations may seem dithey may have had some show of justification, for rected against a man of straw; and they would aptheir burdens were none of the lightest, and were pear so to us, but for the sentiments and doctrines in part attributable to Simon De Sudbury, Chan-which have been put forth with no inconsiderable cellor of Richard II., and his legal advisers. Wal- weight of authority, in this latitude, at least, in singham, in his account of Wat Tyler's rebellion, times of exciting popular elections. says, that he wished to obtain a commission to decapitate all the lawyers and all who were learned in the law, or had any official connection with it; for he conceived, that all those learned in the law being slain, after that, there either would be no law, or it would be made to suit their pleasure.*

The views which we have presented as to the influence and dispositions of the legal profession, apply to them only in the aggregate. No doubt many strong instances might be cited, militating against them. But from some of the strongest and best established principles of mental philosophy, *"Voluit namque ad alia commissionem pro se et suis the conclusions here drawn, must in the main be obtinuisse, ad decollandum omnes juridicos et universos correct, as surely as the colored medium through qui vel in lege docti fuere vel cum jure ratione officii com- which we look imparts its hue to the spreading municavere. Mente nempe conceperat, doctis in lege ne-landscape. It must be admitted, with M. De catis, universa juxta communis plebis scitum de cætero or- Tocqueville, that the tendencies so natural to the

dinari, et nullum omnino legem fore futuram vel si futura foret, esse pro suorum arbitrio statuenda." Walsingham, p. 361. Quoted by Lord Campbell, in Lives of the Chancellors, vol. i. p. 226, note.

members of the bench and bar, “are not suthciently strong to sway them irresistibly:" and we have stated some counteracting circumstances in

It may be objected that such a submissive, rever

the situation of American and especially of Vir- himself constrained to say, "thus far and no farginia lawyers. ther;" and was engaged in an effort to arrest its Nor do we mean to say or intimate, that the law-swollen progress, when death hurried him from the yers with their conservative principles are to be scene. found in any particular political party. Men who espouse the same general principles, and are actu-ential spirit, as is herein recommended, is that of ated by the same patriotic motives, may deduce an abject, and would uphold the autocracy of Rusdifferent consequences and applications from those sia and the despotism of Turkey, as well as the free principles, and become affiliated with those of dif- polity of our Union. But it may be replied, what ferent, it may be of opposite characters and opin- have even they to expect from sudden changes, or ions. It will be well for the country to find her revolution? And it is not so easily to be determined lawyers in every political party; for there is good that the interests of their subjects are not rather reason to expect that they will not be the destruc- promoted by stability, with such ameliorations as tives and disorganizers of any party; but prove a may be slowly wrought, than by a spirit of anarchy. "lump of leaven" to those with whom they may But, in short, nothing that we have said contemplates become associated. Among such may we expect such a state of things. We are in the full enjoyto find the Phocions and Aristides of the republic. ment of liberty; and the problem is not, how to obThese views of the conservative character of tain, but how to preserve it. Our past is one of the legal profession in England and the United glory, honor and safety; and in reverencing it and States, are rather strengthened than weakened the worthies who have made it illustrious, we only by the somewhat opposite results in France; revere what is highest and best. May not our for the cause being removed, we cannot expect the same results. There, as we are informed by De Tocqueville, the advocate inquires what should have been done and adduces his own reasons for the course he recommends. "The most trifling litigation," says he, "is never conducted without the introduction of an entire system of ideas liar to the counsel employed." Hence naturally arise a wildness of speculation and fervor of innovation. The lawyers mainly contributed to overthrow the French monarchy, in 1789, which was certainly most oppressive, though most of its evils were inherited along with its crown, by the unfortunate Louis XVI. The part taken by the lawyers was, no doubt, partly owing to their being excluded from a participation in the legislation of the kingdom; but to this must be added the want of a conservative principle in the profession itself. And about that time, too, the most unbridled license of political speculation was given and indulged by all classes, the court not excepted, and called forth an almost separate profession-the philosophists. It must be dangerous to entrust important affairs of government to men, whose minds are little imbued with reverence for the past, and so ready to devise and promulge systems the more pleasing to their authors and their admirers, in proportion as they are new, and best subserve their immediate purposes.

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Yet a French advocate must be extensively acquainted with the statutes of his country, and the habit of expounding and enforcing them, may naturally produce some conservative regard for laws passed by the constituted authorities.

Though the impetuous torrent of Mirabeau's eloquence had contributed so much to roll on the devastating flood of the French Revolution, he was

* Democracy in America, p. 258.

situation be likened, without irreverence, to that of the angel Raphael, when sent on his errand of mercy and warning to our first parents surrounded with perils and temptations? Did he look back, his eye rested on the "Garden of God, with cedars crowned above all hills;" whilst before him was his mission to man. Our career thus far has been bright and illustrious, and crowded all along with divine blessings; and in looking back, the patriot's vision, however expansive it may be, is filled with the image of the peerless Washington, heaven's best gift to our country. Before us is our mission, our destiny, not without dangers; but with the lamp of experience, the light of the past to guide us, we may march triumphantly onward to hail other Washingtons,

"Whose pious toils,

Sacred to Science, Liberty and Right,
And Peace, through every age divinely bright;
Shall shine the boast and wonder of mankind!"

LIGHTNING.

BY S. S. BRADFORD.

Where sleeps the lightning? Can'st thou tell,
Thou of the million waves!

Thou of the treasure depths untold,

The pearl and diamond graves!
Whence came that fire,-the glowing red,

That tore thy depths apart!
When, as if spear-points, sharp and keen,
Had pierced thy very heart,-

The subject of these lines is taken from an incident related in Carlyle's life of Schiller, page 7.

In maddened agony, thy waves

Dashed foaming from their rocky caves,
And, with the wonders of the sky,
Mingled their own wild melody.

Spirits of air! whence comes the bolt,

That tears the blue of heaven?

The flame, that gleams while your bright depths
By the glowing fires are riven?

Whence came that cloud, that slowly sweeps,
Black, fire-edged, through your darkening deeps,
The Lightning spirit's shroud of gloom,
To man, the shadow of the tomb!

Spirits of earth! say can ye tell,

From whence that brightness fell, That flashed across the gloomy wood, And lit the darkest dell!

Where sleeps the bolt, before its fires

Tear the old monarch trees,

The leaves of days, the boughs of years, The roots of centuries?

Where sleeps the bolt, before it breaks

Your barriers of rocks?
Ye trembling genii of the hills,

Whence came the dreadful shock, That made your lofty mountains quiver, Like the dancing wavelets of a river?

I ask the question, last, of thee,
Thyself, thyself alone,

Thou cord of heaven's awful lyre,
Sounding the thunder-tone!

Thou messenger from Heaven to Earth,

With Death's red, fiery pinion,

Whence came thy strength, and where thy birth, And why thy dread dominion?

The lightning speaketh not, in words,
Addressed to mortal ear,

Yet is there that, in the thunder's note,

The listening soul can hear.

In every line of molten fire,

It writes upon the sky

Dread words, which never may be read
But by the spirit's eye!

Its hone was in unfathomed caves,

Stores of Jehovah's wrath!

And when His feet, to trample earth,
Trod the avenging path,

He called the lightning's fires;-then first

Their adamantine bars they burst, And while old ocean's deepest sands, Were rolled across the fertile lands,They played around the surge's head, And tinged the white foam with bright red!

Poet! within that soul of thine,

Blazes a brighter fire,

Than ever glittered round the tree,

Or tore the temple spire!

Its flashes kindle in thy lines,

And blaze from thy blue eye,

As plays the glowing, quivering flame,
Where nature writes her glorious name,
In the clear, azure sky!

That lightning, with its fiery chain,
The mortal frame may bind ;-
Thine intellectual fires shall flash,

In brightness, o'er the mind!
The thunder peal shall be,—the sound
Of passion's waking tone,
Emotions struggling into life,
Deep, fathomless, unknown!
Afton, Culpepper Co., Va.

HOW THEY MANAGE MATTERS IN THE MODEL REPUBLIC.

A would-be-Sidney Smith is enlightening the Model Empire of Great Britain and Ireland, through the pages of Blackwood," as to the mode of managing matters in our Republic. We do not think that the mantle of the late Rev. Bondholder has quite fallen upon the author; but his wit is passable and frequently entertaining, and as such exhibitions of English taste and feeling through the leading Literary Journals of the realm have ever been to us highly amusing, we thought that the following article would prove sufficiently so to our readers to justify us in extracting it. In this we trust we do not "pirate Maga," as we only aid the writer in more extensively addressing American readers, for whom chiefly he has written. In his next paper, we commend to his notice how we "manage matters" in sending relief to a part of the Model Empire and refer him to Lord John Russell's speech for information. In the conclusion of his article, the author intimates that he came to this country as agent, or drummer for some commercial House. Most of his statements, not being about British goods, are as authentic as that which says Americans are not fond of a joke!-[Ed. Mess.

In our last April number on the appropriate Day of Fools-we laid before our readers a few stray flowers of speech, culled with little labor in that rich garden of oratorical delight-the Congress of the United States. Sweets to the sweet! We confess that we designed that salutary exposure less for the benefit of our readers and subscribers in the Old World, than of those who are our readers, but not our subscribers, in the New. For, in the absence of an international copyright law, Maga is extensively pirated in the United States, extensively read, and we fear very imper. fectly digested. This arrangement appears to us to work badly for all the parties concerned. It robs the British publisher, and impoverishes the native author. As to the American public, if our precepts had exercised any influence upon their practice, they would have learned long ago that

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