whole power of his mind, the full fervor of his affections, and the unremitted labor of his maturer years. "And what is a Christian Republicanism? It is not, in social life, a want of caste, and absence of rank; for as surely as one star differeth from another star in glory, so surely will those of varying tastes, powers, and habits walk apart from one another. In the hour of turmoil, the great deep may be broken up, and society, storm-shaken and chaotic, be devoid of all order and beauty; but when stillness comes back, the laws of social are as certain as those of mineral crystallization, and every layer, one above the other, will return to its place, silently, but surely. It is not, in politics, the absence of place, power, patronage; it is not that democracy which would, by rotation in office, place in the chair any and every man, nor that which would bestow office as a reward. It would, on the contrary, forbid the mass to hold place; it would silence him that shouted aloud of his services, and asked to be paid in power. "The great idea, as Coleridge would call it, the great informing idea of republicanism is, not that distinctions, and ranks, and privileges are to be abolished, but that MERIT shall take the place of BIRTH, WEALTH, and PROWESS, and become the basis of an aristocracy; and Christian republicanism makes Christ the judge of merit. "What is merit? It is genius, learning, experience, and, above all, character. It is whatever Christianity and the good sense of the time may make it. Merit was the basis of the European aristocracy, at a time when might of arm was merit. The error, the fatal error, was to make that which can belong but to the man descend, as an heirloom, to his sons; in that hour the true principle of rank was lost sight of. "We wish upon this point to be clear. We therefore again say, that to us republicanism does not oppose differences of rank; it does not teach that men are born equal, or are ever equal; it does not level, for to level is ever to lower. No, it leaves those that are high there, and seeks to raise others to them; it differs from other forms of government in this, and only this, that its standard of height, its principle of classification, is wide of theirs. "The true republican, then, will not seek to believe, or to make those about him believe, that he and they are as good as any; his desire and struggle will be to make himself and his fellows as good, not only as others, but as the oracle within tells him they should be. When a place is to be filled, he will vote, speak, write, for the man best fitted for it. He will revere the wise, and good, and aged, as men of a rank above his own; he will look up to them; they will be, in his eyes, nobles. But you will say this is so already. We reply, to some extent it is; the mass feel, though they do not see, the idea we have spoken of; they cry aloud, 'All men are equal,' and bow to thousands; their acts mock their words daily ;· and why? Because they do not think of inequality, unless in fortune, birth, and education; they mean to say, when they speak of all men being born equal, that no man, merely because of the condition of his fathers, is high; nor is, for any thing he may have himself done, entitled to other than the natural and certain results thereof. For instance, the son of Daniel Webster has not, because of his father's stand, a claim to any preeminence himself; nor, having equal merit with his father, can he claim to give more votes than others, or receive a support from the state. But he can and will claim to exert a greater moral and intellectual influence than others, to stand higher and be more respected than others. And nature guarantees his claim, for republicanism is the order of nature; the aristocracy of a republic is the aristocracy of nature. It is an error to think a patriarchal government resembles a monarchy; the father rules on the ground of merit, not of birth; he rules on the true republican ground, and so does the sachem of the Indian tribe. And each of nature's governors, each and all, rule on the score of merit, merit measured by the unenlightened sense, while with us, as we have before said, the judge of merit should and must be Him that inhabiteth eternity. "This Christian republicanism we hope will one day abide in the West; it is the social and political philosophy which is to become the marked faith of this land. Old in theory, it will, applied to practice, be new; and though it must ever come short of the point of perfection, much, very much, may be done towards its growth and power; and much is doing even now, while we write. "And a new religious philosophy is to spring up here; not a new system of religious faith and rite, but new principles of religious thought, feeling, word, and action. Unitarianism we do not hope nor wish to see the one creed here; identity of doctrine God never meant should be, for he gave us our minds, and placed us where we are; by the last he made us Christians rather than Turks, and by the first he made us Calvinists, Methodists, or Unitarians. Until the original and broad differences between men are done away, the same proofs, arguments, appeals, will affect them differently; and there is as little chance of their agreeing as there is that the herdsmen of Bukharia will become Christian. He may be made so, and the strong bonds of temper and training may be rent, and far-sundered sectarians be united; but such a union will not be general. One man is born a Socinian, another a Calvinist, a third a disciple of Emanuel Swedenborg. And never in this valley may the Sabbath smile upon a dead uniformity! Long may the follower of the Genevan here pour forth his unwritten prayer! Long may the clergyman of the Episcopal Church lose himself in the beauty and devotion of his most beautiful service, the Roman Catholic in his vast cathedral, speak the words of truth and wisdom to those who, of all, most need them, the Methodist seek God in the wilderness, and the Baptist call aloud to him from the watercourses! We would not blot out one church, nor take from any the faith which forms his staff. "The religious ideas which we hope may become the life of faith here are those of the Reformation, as they were in the breast of Luther when passion slept, and the strong voice of his own good and right sense spake out. Freedom from naked authority; toleration in heart as well as act; modesty, hope, faith, in doctrine and demeanor; appeals to the reason — not the understanding which rejects mysteries that reason receives, but the true reason which takes hold on the mysterious moral, as on the mathematical truth, and believes- rather than passion and prejudice; these form the central points of that philosophy which, old in the world of thought, is yet unknown in the world of feeling and action; but which we trust may find a dwelling upon our plains, and walk unfettered among the green pastures, and by the still waters, of the West." Vol. i. pp. 154 – 157. Of the Poems we hardly know which to select. Mr. Perkins did not deem himself a poet. He certainly was one in the highest, truest, sense of the word; but perhaps less so under the infrequent shackles of rhyme and rhythm, than in the lofty breathing, rich flow, and harmonious cadence of his most animated prose writings. But the poems in this volume are precious because they are truly his, draped in the translucent purity of his spirit, veined with his lambent fancy, and fragrant with the aroma of his simple piety. The following "Invocation," beautiful in itself, will be read with deep emotion by those who knew him; for it will seem to them but a leaf from the book of his daily life, so visibly did heavenly communings chasten, exalt, and hallow his entire walk among men. "SPIRITS who hover near me, Beat back the Tempter, whose sweet presence brings Calm, gentle feelings, wishes pure and kind, An eye for all God's beauty, and a mind ye whose wings Open to all his voices, still be nigh, When the Great Mystery its broad shadow flings Like phantoms of the night, and teach me how to die. When my breath faileth, as the summer air Fainteth at evening, when my heart, whose care Reveal your forms of light, and make me love to die. The pinions of the Dark and Dreaded One The prayer is answered. For a brief For a brief space of bewilderment and agony, "the shining ones," under whose watch and ward he had led a life so sacred and so beautiful, may have been withdrawn from his view, and "the pinions of the Dark and Dreaded One" flapped heavily upon his flesh-burdened spirit. Then indeed he "sank low, but mounted high With nectar pure his oozy locks he laves, 18* ART. X.-Notes on mical, and Social. 7. Bowen North America, Agricultural, Econo- 1851. MR. JOHNSTON has a high reputation, we understand, as a lecturer and a writer on physical geography and the application of chemical and geological science to agriculture; but he is not likely to increase his fame by publishing books of travels. He has not Sir Charles Lyell's pleasant manner of blending the details and comprehensive speculations of science with lively and good-humored observations on men and manners, and with instructive disquisitions on the points of resemblance and contrast between the social organizations of different countries. As a writer and a thinker he is decidedly inferior to the eminent geologist, with whose work his own volumes naturally invite comparison, from their great similarity of plan. Apparently dissatisfied with the results of his visit to this country, or unfortunate in meeting with but few persons who were remarkable either for their intelligence or their manners, Mr. Johnston's comments on American institutions and the tone of American society are subacid in character, and indicate that his nerves were much jarred by what he saw and heard, and by the salient differences between the state of things on this side of the Atlantic and that with which he was familiar in Scotland and the north of England. It might have been well for him to remember that, either from the shortness of his stay or from other causes, he saw but little of the best portions of our society, and that remarks casually made by such persons as he happened to meet in railroad cars and steamboats were not a fair index of the tone of public opinion here in America. He complains of our national propensity to "brag and swagger," and that we misuse the king's English shamefully. He asserts that "Europe, not America, is the cause of the rapid growth of the United States, European capital, European hands, and European energy; " and that the great increase of the city of New York is less remarkable than that of Glasgow, inasmuch as "it proves nothing in regard to the native energy " of the people who were born on the soil which they inhabit. He |