growing tendency to import into it the dyspeptic fancies and fastidious wire-drawn refinements of an opium-drugged cockneyism be checked! Let the forcible talent of Neal, and the spirituelle imagination of Willis, be better employed; nor forget the manly simplicity which has characterized a country only formed, as has been aptly said, in reference to its rugged soil," to grow men."

These remarks are not irrelevant. For the cultivated society, whose moral taste has governed the literature we have spoken of, is that in which Miss Sedgwick's mind was nurtured. Here her sensibility to the pure and good, her fine powers of observation on character, and her thoughts on social institutions, have been exercised into a vigorous maturity, without her losing, in the cultivation of her taste, the fresh, fearless innocence of thought and feeling which she embodies in her heroines, and which carries them "through the burning ploughshares of this wicked world, unshod and unharmed, like the good Queen Emma" of the English legend. It will be acknowledged that if these fearless actions are necessary to show how essentially pure and harmless is the social atmosphere, they are not, on the whole, to be considered as defects, in works whose principal ain seems to be to describe surrounding society, only so far idealizing it, as to have all that is best within it make its full impression and have its full moral influence.

It was not, however, merely to vindicate the unrulableness in which Miss Sedgwick sometimes indulges her heroines, who are ever "pure in the last recesses of the heart," that these remarks have been made on New-England society and its literature. Miss Sedgwick's works begin to claim a higher place than that of elegant literature. She is evidently a republican writer, in a department which has hitherto been devoted to glorifying the spirit of feudalism, and its consequent false views; and which has certainly never before been made a refracting atmosphere to diffuse the light of our institutions over the whole surface of our society, though so admirably adapted to this purpose.

On the other side of the Atlantic, a woman has risen up, by similar means, to do a sadder work. Miss Martineau has tasked herself to pursue all the false principles of government and political economy into their moral results in the heart of society. And how faithfully the task has been executed thus far; and what agonizing scenes of real life her searching fictions have laid open, we have not leisure now to express; having at this time set ourselves to speak of Miss Sedgwick, who has not a field less extensive in prospect, and how sunshiny in comparison! Every step of her way may be illuminated by the radiance of her country's prosperity, and warmed by her own gratitude therefor; and through the natural nightly vicissitudes which must come to all dwellers on this earthly ball, what starry lights of hope has she to guide her!

We are not so foolish as to ground our expectation of Miss Sedgwick's being the counterpart of Miss Martineau upon the circumstance that she has written a tale entitled Home, in a volume of about the same size, as those numbers of the Illustrations of Political Economy, which have produced such a sensation in England: but because we see in all her works, and especially in that one, the marks of a true genius for commencing a literature for the mass of the American people which shall bring up their moral tone to the spirit of their institutions. Her mind appreciates the peculiar dignity of republicanism, and her heart rejoices in its enacted poetry. She perceives how naturally this form of society weds Christianity; and with what selfrespecting loyalty it rejoices to obey the sacred oracles of its holy and beautiful bride, ever at hand to be consulted, in the simple temple of Family; that only earthly shrine which God's own hands did ever erect for man to worship in.

This temple of worship she represents also as the school of the homely virtues. Here she would have the courteous bearing of Americans towards each other, whether in or out of Congress halls, to be taught them. Not in the fencing school or the court, but at the humble table, and in the little parlour of the mechanic, grace and urbanity are to be learnt; by more efficient means than the sound of the dancing master's fiddlestick and the prescribed mummeries of a master of court ceremonies-even by the voice of parental affection, making music with the heart- obedience of filial and fraternal love; the forms of politeness being left to sense and nature, governed and restrained as these are by such discipline as William Barclay bestowed upon Wallace, and such motherly hints as his excellent wife gave to her children at table, and to the self-relying Alice, when she would have spoken harshly of the deficiency of working ability in the unfortunate Emily Norton. She would have young men stimulated to the moral glory of patriotic duty, by such mothers as Elliot Lee's, and such sisters as Isabella Linwood, who precede them in sacrifice; restraining their own instinctive impulses by conscientious inquiry into the first principles of action for a man and a citizen, and letting no feminine weakness choke the clear tones of encouragement with which they advise to obey the dictates of moral rectitude, although themselves are to be left, while their sons and brothers are away at the war and the national councils. Here, also, would she have still more private virtues and vices dealt with. The reckless gambler is to be punished as Jane Elton punished Erskine, by plucking out her own heart-cherished fancy, and turning from the semblance of the home offered her by a selfish lover, to the unshared duty of a village school-room, where she could still act according to her own views of right with none to hinder. (How we wish the author had left her there!) Intemperance and

all its horrors she would bring more terribly to the heart, because more truly than through visions of demons in distil-houses and breweries, by pouring the soul-poison down the throat of the skinner Hewson, as the only specific for destroying the last sparks of humanity, and making him the wild beast that could tear her blind children from the arms of their mother. And how is all "Liberator"-vituperation put to shame by the genuine argument to the heart and understanding that goes forth from the faithful services of the freed-negro Rose! Even when Miss Sedgwick seems to take the least pains to inculcate a moral, a moral spirit breathes from all her pages: and it is a beautiful, glowing, creative, moral spirit, that not only goes back to repent with Redwood over the past, but with Elliot Lee and William Barclay, goes forward to sanctify the new forms of political and social condition in which it finds itself. What a morning glow of youth comes from her pages! they ring with the laugh of childhood, whose echoes die away in the softer music of humanity, from the low heart-touched tones of youthful tenderness, and the subdued bass voices of time-chastened sorrows. The death of that beautiful boy in the first volume of Clarence, is so real an event to every reader, that each might pray with sincerity, in the yet retained style of the Puritans, to have the affliction sanctified to the good of their souls; after having returned thanks to heaven for his birth and life. And who would not be better prepared to bear the death of a beloved son and brother after watching the death-bed of Charles Barclay?

In the story of Home Miss Sedgwick gives herself more scope for direct moral inculcation; and we prefer this form, therefore, to that of the more technical novel, for we are sure she never can fall into a bald didactic. Her works are not architectures of stone, and wood, and other dead material; a style of writing adapted to guide other ends. Her productions grow up like the trees and the flowers; and if the forms are not strictly everlasting, yet they live, (the former a long time,) and the most transient of the latter leave a deathless perfume to those who will extract their essence.

We might sustain this remark by references to particular touches of moral sensibility, laying open principles that may be applied to every day's action, and lend a daily beauty to the most common life, for such abound in these volumes; but we prefer that our readers should seek them for themselves in frequent re-perusals, and shall now bring to a close our desultory hints of our delight in what Miss Sedgwick has already done, and our sense of her fitness for the work she has commenced; for we trust that Home is but the commencement of a series. Many subjects there touched upon are not exhausted. The excellent hint for assisting the poor, is but one of many that she would know how to give, adapted to other places than New-York city: for

the phases which poverty, and the ignorance which so often produces it, take, vary with the location; in this connexion she could also set forth the precise relation which some necessary public institutions of benevolence ought to hold to the conscience of the people. For Insane Hospitals for the Poor, Blind Asylums, Infirmaries for the Sick, &c., are not only to be supported in this country by private subscription and bequest, but to be administered in a more philosophic and reflective spirit than in those countries where the blind spirit of Catholie almsgiving has moulded all the methods, and pointed out but low ends of charity. Nor could any one, better than herself, illustrate the new relations of master and servant among us, as may be seen from Barclay's management of Martha. And this is unfortunate; for the rich are yet to learn that if they are to be exempted from manual labor, it must be by sharing more equally with those that serve them their wealth; and those who serve are to learn, at the same time, that, as their privileges rise, and their means of comfort and improvement are enlarged, their sense of duty is to grow more refined, and their service to be more faithful, hearty, and intelligent. Both parties need to have more just views as to what is of essential value, and what is illusion. Perhaps it is but reasonable to believe that what has been called the lower class will prove quite as apt pupils in this new philosophy of life, as those who think themselves the highest. We will mention a single point, as an instance of those things which are perplexing to many minds. By the introduction of factories into NewEngland, the price of female labor has been so much augmented, that a hue and cry has been raised that we shall have no servants in our houses, and there is certainly a difficulty in getting servants at wages very much less than those which they may earn elsewhere. But it may be shown that this inconvenience has its limit; that by and by a reasonable rise of wages will take place; and that then there will grow a greater respect towards those to whom these better wages are paid; and that the ultimate effect of this, joined to the undoubted advantage which a place in a family affords to a young woman who wishes to fit herself for the various duties of life, over those presented by a crowded boarding-house in a manufacturing town, will force themselves on the minds of thinking parents; and the temporary disproportion which now troubles us will disappear. Manufacturing life itself, and the moral dangers and duties it involves, also need illustration. And the New-England school system is yet to be recommended to immense tracts of country that are fast filling up with population, but are making no provision for the cultivation of the judgment of millions of the voters, and it may be of the legislators and civil officers of the next generation.

Principles of our institutions, yet deeper than any we have mentioned, occur to us as rich subjects. The abstract perfection of our constitution makes it of itself less affecting to the unreasoning mind than one founded on secondary principles would be. It takes only the sentiment of devotion, which is common enough in human nature to bind the soldier to his banner, the subject of a king to his sense-dazzling master. The lust of his eyes comes in aid of his loyalty. But the sovereign who is to enlist the loyalty of this people is an abstract Existence, to be apprehended only by the better part of our nature. It is law, the law that descends from heaven and abides in the moral region; and which must be clothed by the heart, in order that it may be loved as well as respected; while the lower propensities of our nature must not be allowed to dethrone it, in order to place a blind, headlong, selfish will in its place. It is true, our political writers, from the high-souled, purehearted, conscience-clear Quincy,* down through all who have written in the various departments of Political Economy and Legislation, even to Webster, whose works have just been collected; have been most truly inspired with an ever-present aim of making political constitution and legislative enactment" coincident with the moral code."† But these works are such pure reasonings from first principles, that they are too hard reading to be the popular recreation of our community, who generally take up books only as a pastime. Therefore, although the duties of republicans to the constitution and laws which secure their rights, have been reasoned on and set forth by the framers of our government and their successors in the judicial and legal profession, in lucid arguments, filled with the glowing spririt of a truly humane liberty, the mass of our population is growing up ignorant of the true views which should possess a professedly self-governed nation. Never, therefore, was the feminine genius, whose nature it is to apply principle to domestic and social action, and, like spring and summer, to breathe beauty into and over the sublime but wintry outlines of the political system drawn over by masculine power; never, we repeat, was feminine genius before called to a work of such far-reaching beneficence as this one, to accomplish which Miss Sedgwick has given us by her two last works an earnest of her power. To those who think we exaggerate the importance of this work, we would refer to that often repeated saying of a deep thinker-"let me make the ballads of a people, and I care not who makes the laws ;" an aphorism whose spirit is more applicable to a government like ours than it can be to any other, since the laws which the people themselves make, will

* See Life of the elder Josiah Quincy, by his son, the present President of Harvard University: a book which is pregnant with the new era of moral politics: and should be studied by every American.

This fine expression is taken from the Report of the Massachusetts' Legislature on Insolvent Debtors. 1835.