Derar be dead? God still lives and beholds you: March." Here was natural eloquence, cultivated by the scenes amidst which they had lived. We cannot expect to find the same cultivation and produce in the immense valley of the Mississippi, acre for acre, as we find in England, which has been made a fruitful garden by the labour of a thousand years. We must wait for our population to increase, until every "rood of ground maintains its man." It is by a similar argument I wish to defend American genius from the charge of inferiority.

I will take another view of this subject. The supremacy of English genius existed in the Elizabethan Era; and England has not produced an equal to Shakspeare, since the death of the immortal bard of Avon. Englishmen live on the reputation of a few names, as some men wish to preserve a character for virtue by reference to former actions. They refer to Milton, Newton, Shakspeare, Bacon, as evidences of their intellectual superiority as a nation. And are they not also our countrymen; descended from the same Anglo-Saxon race? Did the fact, that religious persecution drove Englishmen to America, change their nature? It is a weakness in Englishmen to attempt to depreciate the genius of America. Intellect is not confined to any country. Africa has produced a Hannibal and a Terence, and Portugal a Camoens. The civil, political, and religious institutions under which a people live, control their genius. The germ does not swell, and bud, and blossom, unless it receive the refreshing rain and the warming

sun. ""Tis Greece, but living Greece no more." And why? Let history answer. The modern Greek lives in the country of Homer and Plato; but the burning lava, from the volcanoes of despotism, has overflowed the land, and withered all that is noble in his nature. Where are the countrymen of Virgil, of Dante, of Ariosto, of Tasso? They dwell on the same sunny plains of Italy; but the heavy yoke of the tyrant has crushed their noble aspirations, and bowed them down to the dust.

In the writings of the present day, we want the unfolding of deep and absorbing passion: the concentration of power, which, although it belongs to excited virtue, is not denied to despairing guilt: that highest effort of the mind of man, when he puts forth all his energies in one grand conception. In this consists the supremacy of Shakspeare. In his writings, the gentle flow of the river fills our imagination with images of beauty; and, before we are aware of the change, the swollen and impetuous torrent rushes on to the ocean. Lady Macbeth exhibits the dark and terrific passions of human nature; and, as we read the description, we see her standing before us with her extended and blood-stained hand, exclaiming, "Out, damned spot!" There is nature in the poetry of Sappho, and in the burning words of the Abelard and Heloise; and, without following her guidance, no writer could adequately describe the first consciousness of love-the turning of the warm affections into a channel where they had never before flowed-the first-born offspring of the heart of man. If a writer wish to portray scenes

which prove that, while virtue is its own reward, vice is its own punishment, he must learn, from the observation of life, that the hours of revelry, the place of business, the closet, or the crowded hall, do not banish the one thought from the mind of the guilty; that the dying groan of the murdered, the despairing cry of the violated, are ever present with the perpetrator of dark and damning crimes, denying all rest to his troubled spirit. Genius and talent are not the exclusive birthright of any nation. Wherever found, their tendency is to exalt our common nature, since they belong to no clime and no country, but are the treasure of the human race. The Great Father of us all is bountiful to his children; and we are taught by a common origin, common desires, and common destiny, that man is the brother of man. We all depend on the same sun for light, the same air for breath: hopes and fears, joys and sorrows, health and decay, are attendants on our journey; and we alike bow in submission to the same irreversible destiny, "Earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust."

LORD BACON.

THE genius of Bacon has been compared to the tent which "Paribanou, the fairy, presented to Prince Ahmed. Fold it, and it seemed a toy for the hand of a lady. Spread it, and the armies of powerful Sultans might repose beneath its shade." While he stood on an eminence, and extended his view over the great ocean of knowledge, his attention was attracted by the pebbles that were scattered along the shore. He was the most profound thinker and accomplished orator of his age-unequalled for closeness and vigour of style, and richness of fancy. It has been well said of him, that, with great minuteness of observation, he had an amplitude of comprehension, such as has never yet been bestowed on any other human being.

Bacon is the father of Experimental Philosophy. Aristotle lived almost two thousand years before this Prince of Philosophers appeared. The Stagirite wished to establish the same dominion over the minds of men, which his illustrious pupil Alexander desired to establish over nations. The master was more successful than the pupil. The philosophy of Aristotle continued to direct the intellect of the world, long after the empire of the son of Philip had gone down in darkness.

Plato taught his philosophy in the groves of Academus. Their systems triumphed at Rome, and at Athens, in the age of their founders. Four hundred years later, they were the systems of the illustrious men of the Augustan period; and they prevailed during the darkness of the Middle Ages. The essence of this philosophy was the inculcation of the abstract beauty of virtue; but, it did not devise the plans by which men might become virtuous and happy. Its principles could not sustain Cicero, with dignity, during his banishment from Rome; and Cato-after having read the treatise of Plato on the immortality of the soulfell upon his sword, that he might not be compelled to wear the chains which Cæsar had forged for him, and for his country. In all their arguments, its teachers aimed at victory over disputants; and they thought philosophy would be disgraced by attempting any practical improvement, which had reference to the happiness of their species. They invented syllogisms, by the use of which confusion became worse confounded; and the schoolmen supposed they were well employed, when they disputed how many angels could dance on the point of a needle. They endeavoured to prove that pain, and exile, and poverty were not evils; but they could not destroy their own senses, nor the senses of their disciples; and mankind were left to mourn under accumulated miseries, without the attention of philosophy being directed to the discovery of the means by which they might be avoided, or relieved. The Church did not escape the influence of the prevailing systems. Scholastic theology went, hand in hand, with