would be brought to bear with great force on the condition and prospects of the country. The difficulties which result from ambiguous language, unconciliatory temper, dissimilarity of birth, and political connections, might be in a considerable degree obviated. Appropriate libraries would be formed, various influences concentrated, and gradually a public opinion created, which could not fail to be attended with most gratifying results, on the science and profession of the press. The thoughtless assumption of an office involving such weighty responsibilities as the periodical instruction of five thousand or ten thousand human beings, is lamentable indeed.

Another principal cause of the want of succes in our periodical press is the floating and contradictory opinions which prevail in relation to some departments of literature and of mental and moral science. In what way can an editor exert a commanding and permanent influence, unless his readers or a portion of them, as well as himself entertain just conceptions, or agree in certain first principles in relation to the great subjects of human consciousness and observation. He has no land marks to direct his course, no inward laws to shape his efforts. He may write just criticisms, and offer intelligent remarks, but they will be made at random and will tend to no definite result.

Poetry is one of these departments. It is by accident that an article of first rate poetry finds its way into the newspapers. Of the utterly worthless character of a large portion of the selected and original poetry of the newspapers, no person of true taste needs to be informed. The fact is decisive indication of at least one thing; the editors do not attach much importance to the column which is periodically appropriated to this purpose. Poetry is not regarded as among the elements of thought. Its foundation is not laid in the original principles of our nature. It is not currently represented as tasking the highest powers of the human mind. The common opinion is that it is intended simply to please, to furnish innocent and momentary delight, not to change the current of human feelings, and transform the entire character. The effect of the few superior hymns, or the highest religious lyrical poetry, is deserving a critical analysis. Have not those strains of Cowper, Watts, and Wesley, which in a literary or poetical view are the best and most finished, been precisely the ones which have produced the most permanent effects? We are continually grieved in

hearing stanzas read from the pulpit, which cannot be considered as respectable prose, while in the same collections are hymns which open all the fountains of feeling in the human soul. Just consider the estimation in which Wordsworth is regarded in this country. A small edition of his select poems was published in Boston in 1824, in beautiful style, and yet a considerable portion of the edition is unsold. In these ten years, what scores of the volumes of Mrs. Hemans, of Scott, Byron, and Pope, have been scattered abroad. Intelligent men, who profess to be acquainted with poetry, will utter the expressions of entire indifference or of deepseated dislike to a poet of the profoundest philosophy and of the most transcendent imagination. We have been utterly astonished at the gross ignorance which reigns in respect to the first book of the Excursion, containing touches of as genuine nature, and of as true a pathos, as ever uninspired lips breathed. This indifference to Wordsworth is not to be ascribed to his philosophical system, to his Platonism, to what men are pleased to name his mysticism, but to the want of correct views in regard to the nature and objects of poetry. It is to be doubted whether the peculiar merits of Bryant are generally seen, or are the reason why two editions of his collected poems have been called for. He is liked perhaps, as Thomson is, for some "Musidora," or "Lavinia."

Let us consider, for a moment, the science of Political Economy. What a waste of intellect, time, patience, arithinetic, eloquence, money, in the halls of our congress, for the last fifteen years, on the vexed question of the tariff? Men of great capacity, acquainted with and familiarly quoting the same volumes of political and commercial law, maintaining the most contradictory opinions in regard to the true policy of the country! Are there inexplicable difficulties on this subject? Is it inevitably to be in a chaos? Are there no principles in the word of God, in the experience of nations, or in the human mind, which can fix this science on a sure basis? A grave and learned body of men alternately affirming and reversing decisions which so closely affect the wealth and happiness of millions, is a most mortifying proof of the vanity of human wisdom. Writers of the ability of Malthus and Chalmers set themselves seriously at work to provide ways and means to prevent the world from becoming overstocked with inhabitants. The contradictory opinions

on this subject extend their influence of course to the periodical writer. How in such circumstances can he be expected to pursue an enlightened and congruous course?

The case is no better in respect to mental and moral science. The great business of writers, as they successively appear, seems to be to demolish the superstructure of their predecessors. The materialism of Locke and Paley is diffused through all the anglo Saxon tribes. Locke's Essay, and Paley's Philosophy, are text books at the principal British and American colleges. The volumes of Dugald Stewart are indeed elegantly written, but who ever rose from his pages feeling that great principles had been established. The lectures of Brown are highly finished rhetorical essays, or pleasing exhibitions of his social capacities, or of his power of subtle and most attenuated analysis. But has he not done great injustice to the human mind? Is the mysterious soul to be examined like the substances of chemistry? It is lamentable to think how many ingenuous youth for the last ten or fifteen years have been condemned to pore over the pages of Brown and Stewart-never dreaming of the glorious lands which lie beyond the barren theories of the Scotch metaphysicians.

It would be unbecoming in us to detract at all from the just claims of Paley, Reid, Stewart, and Brown. But we cannot cease to deplore the evils which have resulted from their long ascendency. Paley was at home in the Hora Pauline, but he was never made for a mental philosopher. Would that Scotch writers, after they had rejected the Aristotelian logic, had shaken off the bondage to theory and system, and with humble patience, and with deep dependence on the great Source of Mind, had studied their intellectual and moral natures as the holy Leighton studied the divine word, and his own spiritual being. What rich harvests might have now waved around us! What Serbonian bogs might we not have shunned. How powerful might not the periodical press have become. Standing on the firm basis of a right philosophy, with what authority and power, might it not have uttered its criticisms and announced its decisions.

Such seem to us to be the principal reasons of the depressed condition of the periodical press. To maintain its proper rank and exert its legitimate influence, its resources must be concentrated, its conductors must receive an appropriate education, and the doctrines of literature and philosophy

must be defined, and well established. The enlightened community must be made sensible that they have an important duty to perform in giving an ample support to a well conducted press. The real grounds of the influence of this organ need to be understood and properly appreciated. The whole civilized world ought to become conscious that they have in their hands an engine, whose right action will ensure a perfectibility in the human condition of which philosophy has as yet hardly dreamed.

ARTICLE VIII.

MOUNT AUBURN.

THE sentence of death began to be fulfilled in the murder of a human being by his brother. Not by disease, nor by casualty, in its first instance, but "by man came death." Man, who was to be the subject of death and its terrors through all his generations, with his own hand brought in the destroyer and taught him by a first example, that his eye should never pity nor his hand spare. As death was in consequence of sin, it was natural and striking that sin rather than disease should have been most nearly concerned in its first entrance to the world. The race were hereby early taught that their transgression was to prove an evil and a bitter thing, while they saw the rapidity with which sin proceeds from small beginnings to the perpetration of monstrous crimes.

There is reason to believe that the feelings in Cain's heart which at length impelled him to the murder of Abel, were excited in him by a rejection of the atonement. Abel brought unto the Lord the firstlings of his flock; Cain, the produce of the ground. "But without the shedding of blood there is no remission." The early use of bloody sacrifice shows that the appointment and office of the Lamb of God were understood; and the rebuke upon Cain shows that his sin consisted in refusing to bring a typical offering. "And

the Lord said unto Cain, Why art thou wroth? If thou doest well, shalt thou not be accepted? And if not, a sinoffering lieth at the door." He would not bring a sin-offering; while he was willing to offer that which as a husbandman he could bring without much effort, he did not feel such reverence for the appointment of God, or such conviction of his need of expiatory sacrifice, as would have led him to offer a lamb. His heart was too proud to bear the softening effect of an innocent creature bleeding and dying to show forth his desert as a sinner, and teaching him that his lofty soul must consent to be saved, if at all, by a vicarious sacrifice. In this state of mind he could neither bear the gentle remonstrance of Abel, nor look upon his accepted altar but with malignant feelings; and murder followed. Cain was a Deist; for he "believed not the record which God gave" in Paradise "of his Son." If this be true, it is to be remembered that the first entrance of death was in connection with a rejection of the Saviour. The hand of unbelief opened the dark valley, and unbelief has continued to fill its gloomy passage with spirits without hope.

Since the death of Abel, millions have passed into eternity. "The number of the dead long exceedeth all that shall live. The night of time far surpasseth the day, and who knows when was the equinox ?" The earth is supposed to change its inhabitants once in thirty-three years; that is, within that length of time, reckoning from any point, there will be as many deaths as there were people upon the earth when the thirty-three years began. Whole generations have passed from the earth into silence. Of millions that have reigned or served, rejoiced or wept, the great, the ignoble, the proud, the wise, no trace is to be found, and the places which knew them, know them no more. "All these are passed away like a shadow, and as a post that hasteth by; and as a ship that passeth over the waves of the water, which when it is gone by, the trace thereof cannot be found, neither the pathway of the keel in the waves; or like as when an arrow is shot at a mark, it parteth the air, which immediately cometh together again, so that a man cannot know where it went through; even so they as soon as they were born began to draw to their end."+

* Sir T. Browne, Hydriotaphia, Preface.

+ Wisdom of Solomon, v. 9, 10, 12, 13.