quence. A weak and a licentious people may put on what fashion of government it fancies-may deck its disgraceful limbs with what robe of liberty it likes; it will still be the same: it can borrow no virtue from its institutions; it is from it, on the contrary, that those institutions must borrow all their virtues, all their vigor. A virtuous, a brave, a wise people will be free, even under a monarchy. Such a people, no tyranny can tame: the strenous force of its resistance, no power of rulers within and scarcely the vastest strength of foreign arms can quell, or will quell but for an instant--a dear-bought and a short-lived conquest. They who are fit to be free will be free; and so as surely of those who are the contrary. Virtue alone can be liberty. Make the bad, the foolish, the slavish free, and what will such freedom be but a license of everything flagitious, stupid and insolent?

Among the monuments of our own Revolution, it is our personal good fortune to possess perhaps the most remarkable one- -the original of those resolutions of one of the States, the adoption of which was the first signal of a general and regular resistance to the arbitary measures of our mother-country. Their tenor we need not stop to specify. Upon the verso of the single leaf of an old law-book on which they were written, their mover, the greatest orator and perhaps the wisest statesman of that noble time, has left a concise history of the event and its consequences. The brief inscriptive sketch ends with the following striking sentences:

"This brought on the war which finally separated the two countries, and gave independence to ours. Whether this will prove a blessing or a curse will depend upon the use our people make of the blessings which a gracious God hath bestowed on us. If they are wise, they will begreat and happy; if they are of a contrary character they will be miserable. Righteousness alone can exalt them as a nation.

"Reader! whoever thou art, remember this; and, in thy sphere, practise virtue thyself and encourage it in others."

Such is the warning of one of the highest spirits of that proud time, when to utter brave words was no holiday business, as now, and implied blows or hanging, superior dangers and toils not offices, and probably a traitor's doom or a felon's, not an easy public favor, unearned by merit whatever. Eminently a man of the peo

ple, to whose deserved affection he owed whatever public honors he ever courted, and whom he repaid in such noble services as sought their good, not his own, this is his right and citizen-like language to his countrymen. He fed not their ears with servile sounds: he paid them not the baneful, the hypocritical compliment, proving in reality anything but a true respect and love for them, of telling them, as men now do, that the people can do no wrong? which is but a parody, almost equally false, of that other slave maxim, "The king can do no wrong."

Have the people done no wrong? Have they preserved the virtues which founded and can alone secure this government? Is it such as it was?

Behold the answer in a few conspicuous public facts, impossible to mistake or to gainsay!

Before the eyes of the whole people, without fear and almost without reproach, that dangerous and once-dreaded power, the Executive, has been suffered to assume all federal office as a personal attribute, and to dispense it no longer for public ends and with a view to administrative efficiency alone, but for his own known individual aims, or at best as a party reward, almost equally illegitimate. Could there be a more shocking, a more dangerous abuse, a more daring violation of all the spirit of our laws and Constitution ?

He has been suffered, substituting his discretion for the judicial and legislative authorities, and overriding both, to constitute himself the final judge what was the Constitution and what the laws, and, under the name of interpreting them for himself, to execute them or not execute them, as he liked. Such a power, neither the English nor French monarch could for an instant dare to assume.

He has been allowed, when the Senate stood firmly in the way of his far-stretched power, to make regular war upon it-to declare openly that it ought to be pulled down-to stigmatize both it and the Constitution, by denouncing it to the popular prejudices as the aristocratic part of the government-to proclaim himself the legitimate representative and exponent of the national will-and finally, to degrade one of the great coördinate branches of the government, by violating and defacing its archives.

He has made war with an equal success a strictly personal and party war—

upon whatever he liked; now bending the public powers which he wielded to crush the persons that displeased him, and now to overthrow the credit and the currency of the country. What might we not enumerate in the permitted progress of these more than royal usurpations? But they are known, and easily called to mind.

Next to this presidential omnipotence stands that of party, which bestows on it irresponsibility, and willingly helps it to that supremacy, because, let the country and an adverse party be ever so much its victims, these are outlawed for the benefit of the successful faction. These wild excesses of party, its utter immorality, its rapid advance from one fatal practice to another, from one disorganizing method to another, we need scarcely particularize. We have only to state the great and undeniable result-that hardly an abandoned resort can be conceived, which is not sanctioned by party, if it can serve it. We see the people themselves continually selecting, for the high trust of a federal representative, the most despicable blockheads, the most shameful brawlers, until one of our halls of legislation has come to be regarded, through the scenes which this sort make there, as little better than a cock-pit.

On all sides, men's minds are fired with furious notions, infected with principles fit only to breed confusion, or animated with false philanthropies that set at nought everything for some chimera. Some aspire to an angelic state of things; another, more practical, would plunge us into little better than a bestial one. All these

wild and disorganizing enthusiasms, are sedulously fomented by a party, which can in its large doctrines, embrace any of them, coalesces naturally with every thing wild, and at any event flourishes by whatever can distract and divide honest men.

We have had Nullification established against the authority of all Congress and of the Executive, by the division of one branch of Congress; and that self-subversion of the law is still acted on by a part of the States. We have Repudiation; we have Dorrism; we have AntiRentism; we have Annexation, which is nothing less than an absolute abrogation. of one of the chief checks of the Constitution, and almost an abolition of the Senate. But why should we go on to swell a catalogue so disastrous, sadly printed, as it must be, on the heart of every intelligent man that loves his country? Let us sum up all in the humiliating and strange fact, that over this Republican country, a party, averred by one of its great leaders, to be "held together only by the cohesive force of public plunder," has once more waved in triumph the banner of the spoils."

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Meantime, debauched with the flatteries of endless demagogues, and blind to everything but party, deaf to everything but its fallacious names, while every considerate man stands appalled at the growing licentiousness, the rapid strides of Corruption and Disorganization, the people sees no danger.

We do: for never was there any symptom so fatal to Liberty, as when none are so loud in its praise as the most abandoned men.

"Fie! this is hot weather!" We were of Falstaff's mind. We spent a half hour at noon, imagining ourselves wandering among the shadowy mountains of the Hudson-deep down among such old gorges, where the cold rivulets are lost and know it not-or that we lay rocking in our boat under low-hanging trees by the shore, and watched the white sails steal up into sight along,and the white clouds glide above, the broad breezy blue of Ontario. Yes, we were stretched upon the grass, where the woods-great woods of maple, and chesnut, and silver-beach and antique Titanic oaks flung wide shadows on our boyhoodnear our father's home, many years ago, when the world of the West was newer. It was to no purpose. The imagination has great power, but it did not cool us. So we arose, darkened our windows, and spread ourself, supinely, on a broad matrass-broad, and not too yielding, but mediate between a feather-bed and a board. We slept?--No: it is sinful at mid-day. None but a beer-drinker sleeps after once dressing. We extended our hand lazily for a light work-not too light, you are aware, but something between inspiration and argument, and of which the very subject demands no continuous strain longer than one minute, yet ends silently to deepen the rivers of thought. Our hand fell on "Letters from Italy." It was a pleasant surprise. We had forgot bringing it home the day before in our pocket-a great excellence of this elegant series, not to mention other good qualities,that one can carry his mental food, like a sandwich, around with him. It might have been, by an equal chance, Liegh Hunt's "Imagination and Fancy," a book for all weather-or Hazlitt's glittering Essays, which we have read and re-read, and shall read again-or

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Undine," which no one can dream through too often, the most exquisite and delightful of all modern fictions or "The Crescent and the Cross," another brilliant panorama of oriental life or any other of numerous new stamped volumes, to say nothing of old favorites-ah! better than them all! -it might have been anything, for our table hath always a most delectable confusion. Yet, it was the right one that turned up.―The Italian Letters! Many of

them, we knew, would be old acquaintances-wide scattered once-such regard was had for bright illuminations !—in a legion of newspapers. So much the better. A book is poor that cannot be read three times. Besides, we remembered the charm that was in them. Rapid, racy, rambling, variable and various earnest, jocose and poetical-we knew what was in store for us. So we began at the vivid and painfully impressive description of "A man overboard," and floated along to the end. We will not say, that we did not close our eyes just a moment, about half past two. But it was our fault, not the book's. And even then, in the space, doubtless, of a few seconds-so wonderful a faculty hath the mind!-what visions arose before us-the legitimate effect of your graphic sketches-the old shores of the Mediterranean; such skies, such mountains, such a sea!--cities, temples, churches, monuments and tombssculpture, glorious sculpture, and paintings more eloquent than life-and every where the long uncultivated hills and vallies, with herdsmen and shepherds, and most wretched beggary huddling by the side of palaces or among majestic ruins and all reposing in the hoar shadow of antiquity! Was it a dream only? The volume will answer. Might it be, we would consent to sleep for a year.

"Italia! oh Italia! thou who hast The fatal gift of beauty, which became A funeral dower of present woes and past, On thy sweet brow is sorrow ploughed by shame,

And annals graved in character of flame. Oh God! that thou wert in thy nakedness Less lovely, or more powerful, and could'st

claim

Thy right, and awe the robbers back, who To shed thy blood and drink the tears of

press

thy distress."

A most beautiful lamentation, and so much of its beauty lies in its truth!

But Italy has been visited so often, and written about so much! If it were only now a less frequented region, like that which "Eothen" so dazzlingly wandered over.

So much the greater triumph-to strike off sketches, on beaten ground, that can be read-yes, and live with you. The

truth is, it depends on who it is that takes it upon him to tell his adventures. It is but seldom we get the full, or we should better say, the real impressions of a traveler. But seldom, therefore, do we have a good hook of travels, since it is utterly useless for the writer to represent things as he thinks they ought to have been, not as he found they were. All the narrations of journeyings since Cain went out into the land of Nod would teach us nothing in that way. Undoubtedly, the most satisfactory to the reader would be, to see the things described through his own eyes; but the next is, to be sure that he actually sees them through the eyes of the traveler-that at the moment when he thinks he is the most certainly doing so, his pleasant narrator does not shut them and draw on his imagination. This, however, from incapacity or design, is the case nine times out of ten.

In the first place, the traveler is usually anxious to suit the public taste. Finding, therefore, scenes and circumstances altogether different from such as he had formed in fancy, and supposing the fancies of the public at home to have been like his own, he undertakes to describe accordingly. The book must be made to please, and to please it must come up to expectation.

What is more, however, not one man in ten has the ability to write the truth about new things-even as they impressed him. If he writes on the spot, his impressions of different scenes and incidents are apt, for the moment, to be disproportioned to their importance; the small obtain as much regard as the great, often more, and the picture is distorted. If he write from recollection, too many of the slight are forgotten, and those that remain become blended together. The picture is then both general and indistinct. Too much or too little of the minutiae of a traveler's life is equally disadvantageous for the best effect; and the most striking and impressive of travelers' narratives, are those written, as Kinglake (if that is the author's name) wrote his Eothen, and as the honey-mouthed Herodotus related the strange things he had heard and seen to the wonder-loving Athenians a man, namely, of fine imagination and vivid memory, grouping together, after a long interval-like a landscape painter-the prominent and bold objects that have remained with him, and filling into every scene the living coloring

of such minute realities as could not be forgotten.

Now, what, in addition to the picturesqueness of the style, is chiefly characteristic of these letters and most commends them to our minds, as well as to our feelings, is their frankness and common sense, and the constant view we are allowed to have of the writer himself. Mr. Headley, in traveling through Italy, has selected objects of interest to suit himself; but he has chosen to present them in such a manner as to reveal Italy to his readers. He has no theories to maintain, or peculiar views to propagate. He has earnestness, quick sympathy, happiness of spirit, and withal a natural readiness to change from one to another without knowing it himself. These qualities imbue the fluent ink in his pen, and his pen is graphic enough to invest scenes and objects thoroughly in their colorings. We are thus made to feel, and see, through his abounding individuality. We become the traveler himself; yet we never mistake him for ourselves. This is a high faculty-though generally an unconscious one with a writer whom it is found to characterize. It is this which imparts its highest interest to Mr. Headley's letters, as was the case with Eothen, though in the author of that brilliant book it was more intensely national, egotistical, and altogether peculiar. Kinglake, strangely variable, seems, in all circumstances to be certain that he knows what he is about, yet without caring whether his readers think so or not. He is an Englishman, of Englishmen. Mr. Headley is not perhaps an American, of Americans, but he suffers every mood of his mind, and such pleasant prejudices as are not forbidden a residence with him, to come out freely to the reader's view. This makes a narrative picturesque; certainly without it no book of travels can well be other than somewhat monotonous. "Also, from grave to gay, from lively to severe," is the best of all possible rules for an account of Jones's ramblings-because such must always be nearest the reality.

With the general rapidity and power of Mr. Headley's style, those who have read, in former numbers of this magazine, the reviews of "Alison's History" and "Thiers' French Revolution," are familiar. His peculiar skill in vivid description, which is his forte, may be seen in the stirring sketches of Bonaparte's Marshals. Many passages of these letters

display the same striking powers. A hundred might be selected. We give two, as affording fine examples of contrast in description-beauty in repose, and beauty sublimed with terror and overpowered by the grandeur that darkens upon it, when the strong elements of Nature are aroused.

"The sun went down over Amalfi, pen

ciling with its last beams the distant mountains that curved into the sea beyond Pæstium. Along the beach, on which the ripples were laying their lips with a gentle murmur, a group of soldiers in their gay uniform were strolling, waking the drowsy echoes of evening with their stirring bugle

notes. The music was sweet; and at such

an hour, in such a scene, doubly so. They wandered carelessly along, now standing on the very edge of the sand where the ripples died, and now hidden from sight behind some projecting point where the sound, confined and thrown back, came faint and distant on the ear, till emerging again into view, the martial strain swelled out in triumphant notes till the rocks above and around were alive with echoes."

"The grey old mountains were looking down on Salerno, and Salerno on the sea; and all was quiet as night ever is when left alone. And yet, quiet and peaceful as it was, it had been the scene of stirring conflicts. There were the moonbeams sleeping on the wall against which Hannibal had once thundered with his fierce Africans; and along that beach the wild war-cry of the Saracen had rung, and women and children lain in slaughtered heaps. But the bold Saracen and bolder African had passed away, while the sea and the rocks remained the same. I turned to my couch, not wondering the poets of the Augustan age sang so much and so sweetly of Salerno."

"NAPLES.

"To-night we arrived at Castellamare. Our road wound along the Bay-near Pompeii, through Torre del Greco, into the city. The sky was darkly overcast-the wind was high and angry, and the usually quiet Bay threw its aroused and rapid swell on the beach. Along the horizon, between the sea and sky, hung a storm-cloud blacker than the water. Here and there was a small sailing-craft, or fisherman's boat, pulling for the shore, while those on the beach were dragging their boats still farther up on the sand, in preparation for the rapidly gathering storm. There is always something fearful in this bustling preparation for a tempest. It was peculiarly so here. The roar of the surge was on one side; on the other lay a buried city-a smoking mountain; while our very road was walled with

lava that cooled on the spot where it stood. The column of smoke that Vesuvius usually sent so calmly into the sky, now lay on a level with the summit, and rolled rapidly inland before the fierce sea-blast. It might have been fancy; but, amid such elements of strength, and such memories and monuments of their fury, it did seem as if it wanted but a single touch to send valley, towns, mountains and all, like a fired ma

gazine, into the air. Clouds of dust rolled over us, blotting out even the road from our view; while the dull report of cannon from added to the confusion and loneliness of the Naples, coming at intervals on our ears,

scene.

As we entered the city and rode along the port, the wild tossing of the tall masts as the heavy hulls rocked on the muffled shouts of seamen, as they threw waves, the creaking of the timbers, and the their fastenings, added to the gloom of the evening; and I went to my room, feeling that I should not be surprised to find myself aroused at any moment by the rocking of an earthquake under me. The night did not disappoint the day, and set in with a wildness and fury, that these fire-countries alone exhibit. My room overlooked the Bay and Vesuvius. The door opened upon a large balcony. As I stood on this, and heard the groaning of the vessels below, reeling in the darkness, and the sullen sound of the surge, as it fell on the beach, while the heavy thunder rolled over the tions-I felt I would not live in Naples. sea, and shook the city on its foundaEver and anon a vivid flash of lightning would throw distant Vesuvius in bold relief

against the sky, with his forehead completely wrapped in clouds that moved not to the blast, but clung there, as if in solemn consultation with the mountain upon the night. Overhead the clouds were driven in every direction, and nature seemed bestirring herself for some wild work. At length the heavy rain-drops began to fall, one by one, as if pressed from the clouds; and I turned to my room, feeling that the storm would weep itself away. Truly yours."

The following is of a different order, but equally admirable, touched, as it is, with a simple pathos.

"The crops are raised during the summer, when the herds are among the hills, and the harvest is gathered in by the mountaineers, who dwell on the Volscian hills and the more elevated land towards the frontier of Naples. At this time the heat is intense, and would make even the slave of a cotton plantation wince. The poor peasantry, who have been accustomed from their infancy to the fresh mountain breezes, and clear running streams of their native home, lured by the prospect of gaining a few pauls to support their families during