'But as the clouds incessant rise,
Evaporating to the skies,

I my life's image see;

For what am I this moment? say,
A mass of animated clay,

And typified in thee!'

'Now on a sudden I conceive,
My soul prepares to take her leave
Like smoke! she wings her way;
Divested of her cumbrous load,
Upward she seeks her destined road,

Down drops the lifeless clay !'

FUMUS.

'That is a solemn thought,' hiccoughed Boniface, 'I move that this murky piece be reserved for the use of Fadladeen.-Ex fumo dare lucem.'

'Gentlemen, we have finally, "The Scribbler," a criticism upon Miss Martineau-how shall it be disposed of?'

'With your leave,' observed Tubal, ‘I propose the following resolution, and ask for its publication :

'Resolved, That while wholesome and temperate criticisms upon well-known works may not be altogether misplaced, our years, situation and experience, little qualify us for such a task.'

'Resolved, That severe strictures, and "ex cathedra" opinions upon the writings of old and mature minds, are wholly inadmissible to our pages.'

TO CORRESPONDENTS.

"The Scribbler," although written in a fine hand, cannot be admitted to our pages.

"The Influence of Religion upon Ancient Literature," is under consideration. "Lines to a Sister," "Ode to Fashion," and "La Dapart," are thoroughly rejected.

"Fumus" will see that part of his communication is admitted.

"S. B.'s" request shall be gratified.

"Mixum Gatherum, or Hotch Potch," is favorably received. As it is the commencement of a series, however, the author will see the necessity of an adherence to that rule which forbids us to publish the first part without an assurance that the remaining Nos. will be forthcoming. We should wish a conference with him at

our room.

"Farewell," and an essay "On Genius," are rejected.

Our sheets are not extensive enough for the epic christened "The Rovers."

Articles designed for the next No. are requested to be sent in at an early date as possible.

ATTACHMENT to country, next to filial love, is the earliest and holiest emotion of the mind. Rooted to the soil, by proud recollections of historic glory and by the clustering hopes of future power, it entwines itself with the best resolves, with the most ambitious feelings of the heart. Clinging thus around the affections of the individual and the family hearth, it winds upwards, and clasps with its tendrils the column of national strength; binding together its materials in beautiful and vigorous union, or hanging around its mouldering capital the ever-living memento of its tenacity. The exhibition of a well-ordered government, developing, fostering, and balancing the thousand variant interests of its subjects; standing erect amid the mad elements of passion and vice, and awarding to crime the sentence of justice; exacting for its service the energies of the factious, the wicked and indifferent, and as far as is accordant with individual rights, contributing to promote the organizations of labor, enterprise and virtue, commends itself to the admiration of all. In the adaptation of its several parts to accomplish one systematic motion, there is required the most profound sagacity, combined with the highest wisdom. Into its composition are united the treasured experience of past attempts at government-the primary struggles of popular freedom with individual domination, the matured contest of prerogative against the representative will. Or, perhaps, the present organization is the result of more violent commotions. Fragments of various and opposing systems, thrown down by some domestic revolution, or scattered by some foreign shock, have met and become fused together. Necessity, policy, a steady growth

in all the facilities of social and national improvement, have unfolded in successive stages, the arts of civil life, codes of morality and laws, and the principles and customs of advancing civilization. The growth of religion and literature, too, their different forms and modifications, acting and re-acting upon government, vibrating through all the degrees of weakness and vigorthese will be remarked with no less signal attention. But all of these are interesting to the student and philanthropist, only as they illustrate the condition of those for whose security and protection they were framed, or copy with vividness the features of existing sentiment. The closet theories of Plato, More and Locke are scanned only as the productions of high intellect; not studied, like inscriptions over the tombs of buried nations, to tell of those who have passed away. We would see, not only the anatomy and the figure, sketched with the cold precision of a dissector; we would mark the current of life, as it throbs in the strong pulses of popular enterprise, or gathers in stagnancy about the center of political power; whether, in fine, the people cling to their institutions as the conservators of their rights and happiness, or look to them with that timid and moody apprehension, which restrains the hand of labor from its task, and spreads a moral and intellectual apathy over the minds of the sensitive and gifted.

Contemplated with such feelings, the past history of our race will furnish little gratification to those whom prejudice has not rendered insensible to the monstrous nature of that series of abuses, founded in violence, perpetuated by custom, and at last arrogantly claiming for itself the sanction of reason, policy and justice.

Few and short are the intervals which have witnessed the enterprise of the people, fostered by congenial institutions. For the most part, men have sprung up, vegetated for a short time beneath the sun, and then been quietly resolved into dust scarcely more inert. The stateliest piles which they have heaved, now escaped the dilapidation of age, are memorials only of the senseless ambition of a single will. Unsanctified, too, by any beneficial results or the hearty coöperation of the people are the blazoned exploits of war; in the lengthened catalogues of battles, with which history is swollen, how few are there in which more depended upon the issue, than the humiliation of the leader, or the disappointment of a few subordinates. We cannot, it is true, mark any stage in the history of communities and nations, in which there was not manifested a show of respect for the nominal head, and of zeal, in times of emergency; but it is equally certain, that much of that unanimity of action and concert of movement so necessary to maintain an effective state organization, and so essential to the triumph of great and cardinal movements, have either been wanting or were secured by military coercion, and the agency of a spiritual despotism. Men's feelings and impulses are ever consenta

neous with their importance and prospects; and no more can we expect national enthusiasm, stirring to action, where property and rights are regarded as the inheritance of one or of a privileged order, than we can hope for an elevated tone of morality among those whose condition, associations and necessity tend to extinguish a respect for human nature, and a regard for the attributes of justice and probity—the true sources of religion and law. It must be remarked, too, by those who contemplate the several processes in the advancement of society, morals and politics, that the direct aim of all the influences which power and talent have wielded, has been to refer men backwards-to cherish a blind admiration of the physical virtues and of those rules of subordination, inculcated in the "palmy days of chivalry." Learning contented itself in exhuming ancient manuscripts, in elaborate eulogies upon the authors, and in a servile imitation of their style; Romance drew its grotesque figures from the doughty times of valorous exploits, and Superstition was challenged to adore relics, transmitted with assiduous care from the early times of the apostles. It was thus, that religion and power united in teaching the transcendent glory of a former state. Coöperating with that feeling of reverence which looks with awe upon whatever has been hallowed by time; these wedded the energies and affections of men, to a hopeless, undeviating monotony. Let us not be understood to undervalue a respect for the acts and institutions of former times. Justice to deceased virtue, founded upon a true appreciation of its worth, veneration for these piles, which the good have reared with unwearied patience, and which have afforded a shelter to successive generations, until they have become hoary with age and tradition, betoken the existence of a feeling which we should be slow to invade rudely. But when this high regard, instead of stimulating to a generous competition, is made an apology for want of progress-a pool for rank pride, and stinted enterprise-it is the surest forerunner of patriotism dwarfed, and decay coming on apace.

From what has been said, it must be apparent, that our own country is exactly fitted to promote a keen and almost wild enthusiasm. Unencumbered with the vices of older states, with a history rich beyond any other, in examples of high-toned virtue and unyielding devotion to truth and right, a virgin soil, and especially a government superintending the interests of a vast empire, yet resting in primitive simplicity upon the support of every individual; we look backward with the most satisfied complacency, and forward with the most extravagant hopes. The precocity of our growth in literary distinction, too, a growth which we fondly believe already vies with the veteran progress of the continent, has nurtured among us a regard for ourselves, which the coarse ridicule of foreign criticism has in vain attempted to

diminish. In a word, while every thing here has tended to exalt the individual, and to make him feel a personal concern in the prosperity of the body politic, no wonder that our people have become prophets of unbounded good to our experiments and prospects.

One of the most obvious effects of this high-wrought enthusiasm has been, to push on vast schemes of public improvement, to foster gigantic plans, from which the cautious policy of older states would have recoiled. It is not surprising, that in countries where the government is exposed to the action of conflicting principlesprinciples which cannot find vent in discussion, but involve in the struggle social peace, the existence of the church and throne, and even life itself—where the sovereigns are leagued together against liberality of thought and enterprise, and commerce is watched and made to undergo quarantine, lest it should import political heresies, it is not surprising that there should exist a feeble and decrepit system of improvement. Wealth, ever selfish and wary, will not expose its hoarded treasures to the chances of a revolution; keen of hearing, as those who live at the base of a volcano, who, with unerring sagacity, detect in the changed tremor of the laboring mass, the approach of disruption, and far more miserly, it cares only to hug to itself those treasures which but diminish and canker from disuse. It might, perhaps, be difficult to convince a traveler, who has not studied deeply the genius and results of our institutions, and the character of our citizens, that, beneath our republican querulousness and love of cavil, there lurks a steady confidence in the stability of our government. Should he stay with us for a long time, he will learn, if perchance he be not deaf to the growing testimony of observation, to appreciate our public complaints and fears. He will learn to gather his 'notes,' not from the public journals, where the captious and the disappointed give vent to their spleen, but from the language of those public works which hand him in quick and uninterrupted succession from one point of interest to another, from state to state, each vying, in extent and resources, with the proudest empires he has left behind, until he has traversed a circuit of many thousand leagues, a world of unfolding wealth, greatness and beauty. We pity the obtuseness and obliquity of that vision, which can see, in all this, nought to admire; we pity the narrowness of a political creed, which, mistaking its own little horizon for that which the patriot sees expanding over the whole country, mantles it with clouds drawn from some local discontents and temporary inconveniences. However little disposed other nations may be, to defer to our choice of a system of government, or however slow to acknowledge our claims to the production of great men, specimens of art, and works of taste, they cannot turn away with indifference from that stupendous system of internal improvements,