freedom, to freedom of conscience and opinion; and their noble prayer was, that their children might be thus free. Let their sons remember the prayer of their extremity, and the great bequest which their magnanimity has left us. Let them beware how they become entangled again in the yoke of bondage. Let the ministers at God's altar, let the guardians of the press, let all sober and thinking men, speak the thought that is in them. It is better to speak honest error, than to suppress conscious truth. Smothered error is more dangerous than that which flames and burns out. But do I speak of danger? I know of but one thing safe in the universe, and that is truth. And I know of but one way to truth for an individual mind, and that is, unfettered thought. And I know but one path for the multitude to truth, and that is, thought, freely expressed. Make of truth itself an altar of slavery, and guard it about with a mysterious shrine; bind thought as a victim upon it; and let the passions of the prejudiced multitude minister fuel; and you sacrifice upon that accursed altar, the hopes of the world!

FREEDOM AND PATRIOTISM.

FROM THE SAME.

GoD has stamped upon our very humanity this impress of freedom. It is the unchartered prerogative of human nature. A soul ceases to be a soul, in proportion as it ceases to be free. Strip it of this, and you strip it of one of its essential and characteristic attributes. It is this that draws the footsteps of the wild Indian to his wide and boundless desert-paths, and makes him prefer them to the gay saloons and soft carpets of sumptuous palaces. It is this that makes it so difficult to bring him within the pale of artificial civilization. Our roving tribes are perishing-a sad and solemn sacrifice upon the altar of their wild freedom. They come among us, and look with childish wonder upon the perfection of our arts, and the splendour of our habitations: they submit with ennui and weariness, for a few days, to our burdensome forms and restraints; and then turn their faces to their forest homes, and resolve to push those homes onward till they sink in the Pacific waves, rather than not be free.

It is thus that every people is attached to its country, just in proportion as it is free. No matter if that country be in the rocky fastnesses of Switzerland, amidst the snows of Tartary, or on the most barren and lonely Island-shore; no matter if that country be so poor as to force away its children to other and richer lands, for employment and sustenance; yet when the songs of those free homes chance to fall upon the exile's ear, no soft and ravishing airs that wait upon the timid feastings of Asiatic opulence ever thrilled the heart with such mingled rapture and agony as those simple tones. Sad mementoes might they be of poverty and want and toil; yet it was enough that they were mementoes of happy freedom. And more than once has it been necessary to forbid by

military orders, in the armies of the Swiss mercenaries, the singing of their native songs.

And such an attachment, do I believe, is found in our own people, to their native country. It is the country of the free; and that single consideration compensates for the want of many advantages which other countries possess over us. And glad am I, that it opens wide its hospitable gates, to many a noble but persecuted citizen, from the dungeons of Austria and Italy, and the imprisoning castles and citadels of Poland. Here may they find rest, as they surely find sympathy, though it is saddened with many bitter remembrances!

Yes, let me be free; let me go and come at my own will; let me do business and make journeys, without a vexatious police or insolent soldiery to watch my steps; let me think, and do, and speak, what I please, subject to no limit but that which is set by the common weal; subject to no law but that which conscience binds upon me; and I will bless my country, and love its most rugged rocks and its most barren soil.

I have seen my countrymen, and have been with them a fellow-wanderer, in other lands; and little did I see or feel to warrant the apprehension, sometimes expressed, that foreign travel would weaken our patriotic attachments. One sigh for homehome, arose from all hearts. And why, from palaces and courts-why, from galleries of the arts, where the marble softens into life, and painting sheds an almost living presence of beauty around it-why, from the mountain's awful brow, and the lovely valleys and lakes touched with the sunset hues of old romance-why, from those venerable and touching ruins to which our very heart grows -why, from all these scenes, were they looking beyond the swellings of the Atlantic wave, to a dearer and holier spot of earth-their own, own country. Doubtless, it was, in part, because it is their country? But it was also, as every one's experience will testify, because they knew that there was no oppression, no pitiful exaction of petty tyranny; because that there, they knew, was no accredited and irresistible religious domination; because that there, they knew, they should not meet the odious soldier at every corner, nor swarms of imploring beggars, the victims of misrule; that there, no curse causeless did fall, and no blight, worse than plague and pestilence, did descend amidst the pure dews of heaven; because, in fine, that there, they knew, was liberty-upon all the green hills, and amidst all the peaceful valleysliberty, the wall of fire around the humblest home; the crown of glory, studded with her ever-blazing stars upon the proudest mansion!

My friends, upon our own homes that blessing rests, that guardian care and glorious crown; and when we return to those homes, and so long as we dwell in them-so long as no oppressor's foot invades their thresholds, let us bless them, and hallow them as the homes of freedom! Let us make them, too, the homes of a nobler freedom-of freedom from vice, from evil, from passion--from every corrupting bondage of the soul.

MORAL DANGER OF BUSINESS.

FROM THE SAME.

I ASK, if there is not good ground for the admonitions on this point, of every moral and holy teacher of every age? What means, if there is not, that eternal disingenuity of trade, that is ever putting on fair appearances and false pretences-of "the buyer that says, it is naught, it is naught, but when he is gone his way,then boasteth"-of the seller, who is always exhibiting the best samples, not fair but false samples, of what he has to sell; of the seller, I say, who, to use the language of another, "if he is tying up a bundle of quills, will place several in the centre, of not half the value of the rest, and thus sends forth a hundred liars, with a fair outside, to proclaim as many falsehoods to the world?" These practices, alas! have fallen into the regular course of the business of many. All men expect them; and therefore, you may say, that nobody is deceived. But deception is intended: else why are these things done? What if nobody is deceived? The seller himself is corrupted. He may stand acquitted of dishonesty in the moral code of worldly traffic; no man may charge him with dishonesty; and yet to himself he is a dishonest man. Did I say that nobody is deceived? Nay, but somebody is deceived. This man, the seller, is grossly, wofully deceived. He thinks to make a little profit by his contrivances; and he is selling, by pennyworths, the very integrity of his soul. Yes, the prettiest shop where these things are done, may be to the spiritual vision, a place of more than tragic interest. It is the stage on which the great action of life is performed. There stands a man, who in the sharp collisions of daily traffic, might have polished his mind to the bright and beautiful image of truth, who might have put on the noble brow of candor, and cherished the very soul of uprightness. I have known such a man. I have looked into his humble shop. I have seen the mean and soiled articles with which he is dealing. And yet the process of things going on there, was as beautiful as if it had been done in heaven! But now, what is this man-the man who always turns up to you the better side of every thing he sells the man of unceasing contrivances and expedients, his life long, to make things appear better than they are? Be he the greatest merchant or the poorest huckster, he is a mean, a knavish-and were I not awed by the thoughts of his immortality, I should say-a contemptible creature; whom nobody that knows him can love, whom nobody can trust, whom nobody can reverence. Not one thing in the dusty repository of things, great or small, which he deals with, is so vile as he. What is this thing then, which is done, or may be done, in the house of traffic? I tell you, though you may have thought not so of it-I tell you that there, even there, a soul may be lost!-that that very structure, built for the gain

of earth, may be the gate of hell! Say not that this fearful appellation should be applied to worse places than that. A man may as certainly corrupt all the integrity and virtue of his soul in a warehouse or a shop, as in a gambling-house or a brothel.

THE PEOPLE NOT ALWAYS RIGHT.

FROM THE SAME

I MAINTAIN, that our democratic principle is not that the people are always right. It is this rather; that although the people may sometimes be wrong, yet that they are not so likely to be wrong and to do wrong as irresponsible, hereditary magistrates and legislators; that it is safer to trust the many with the keeping of their own interests, than it is to trust the few to keep those interests for them. The people are not always right; they are often wrong. They must be so, from the very magnitude, difficulty and complication of the questions that are submitted to them. I am amazed, that thinking men, conversant with these questions, should address such gross flattery and monstrous absurdity to the people, as to be constantly telling them, that they will put all these questions right at the ballotbox. And I am no less amazed, that a sensible people should suffer such folly to be spoken to them. Is it possible that the people believe it? Is it possible that the majority itself of any people can be so infatuated as to hold, that in virtue of its being a majority, it is always right? Alas! for truth, if it is to depend on votes! Has the majority always been right in religion or in philosophy? But the science of politics involves questions no less intricate and difficult. And on these questions, there are grave and solemn decisions to be made by the people; great state problems are submitted to them; such, for instance, as concerning internal improvements, the tariff, the currency, banking, and the nicest points of construction; which cost even the wisest men much study; and what the people require for the solution of these questions, is not rash haste, boastful confidence, furious anger and mad strife, but sobriety, calmness, modesty-qualities, indeed, that would go far to abate the violence of our parties, and to hush the brawls of our elections. I do not deny, that questions of deep national concern may justly awaken great zeal and earnestness; but I do deny, that the public mind should be bolstered up with the pride of supposing itself to possess any complete, much less, any suddenly acquired knowledge of them. I am willing to take my fellow-citizens for my governors, with all their errors; I prefer their will, legally signified, to any other government; but to say or imply, that they do not err and often err, is a doctrine alike preposterous in general theory, and pernicious in its effects upon themselves.

THE present Professor of History in Harvard University is a native of Connecticut. He graduated at Cambridge in 1815, and was subsequently for some time one of the tutors there. Having completed his theological studies, and entered the ministry, he was ordained over the first Unitarian Church in Baltimore on the fifth of May, 1819, on which occasion Dr. Channing delivered his celebrated sermon on Unitarian Christianity.

For several years Mr. Sparks wrote largely upon subjects of theological and ecclesiastical controversy, and published, with other works, in 1820, Letters on the Ministry, Ritual and Doctrines of the Protestant Episcopal Church, and in 1823, An Inquiry into the Comparative Moral Tendency of Trinitarian and Unitarian Doctrines, in a series of Letters to Samuel Miller, D. D. of Princeton. From 1823 to 1830 he conducted The North American Review, and in 1828 he commenced that noble series of volumes illustrative of American history to which he has nearly ever since devoted himself, and which have for ever associated his own with the names of the most illustrious of our countrymen.

The first of his historical works was The Life of John Ledyard, the American Navigator and Traveller, in one octavo volume, composed chiefly from manuscripts in possession of Ledyard's family. The second was The Diplomatic Correspondence of the American Revolution, in twelve volumes, published from 1829 to 1831, by order of Congress, under the direction of the President of the United States. The third was The Life of Gouverneur Morris, in three volumes, issued in 1832. The curious details ained in the diary of Morris respecting the Revolution in France, where he was our minister during the Reign of Terror, and the vivacity and point of his correspondence with the most celebrated persons of his age, render this work one of the most interesting in our historical literature. Mr. Sparks exhibited in the selection and arrangement of his materials discriminating judgment and integrity; and the favour with which it was

received encouraged him to proceed in the preparation of his Life and Writings of Washington, which was published in Boston in twelve octavo volumes, between the years 1833 and 1840. He had access not only to the manuscripts of Washington but to every thing that could illustrate his subject in the archives of the United States, England and France, and produced a work in all respects as nearly perfect as possible. The memoir by Mr. Sparks, which occupies the first volume, with a selection of the most important of the letters, was translated into French and published in Paris, in six volumes, by Guizot, who added an original essay on Washington's character; and the whole work was translated into German and published at Leipsic by Von Raumer.

In 1835 he commenced the publication of his admirable edition of the Complete Works of Franklin, with a memoir, of which the tenth and last volume appeared in 1840. The autobiography of Franklin is continued by Mr. Sparks to his death, the numerous questions respecting the authorship of writings attributed to him are satisfactorily decided, and elucidatory notes added wherever they are necessary. It was a labour of difficulty, owing to the carelessness of Franklin respecting his literary reputation, and on other accounts, and it was executed with a diligence and discretion which left nothing to be desired.

The Library of American Biography was commenced by Mr. Sparks in 1835, and the first series of ten volumes was completed in 1839. In this he wrote the lives of Ethan Allen, Benedict Arnold, and Father Marquette. The second series of ten volumes, for which he wrote the lives of Pulaski, La Salle, Ribault, and Charles Lee, was begun in 1843 and finished in 1846. These twenty volumes, in the preparation of which he was aided by the Everetts, Prescott, Wheaton, Charles F. Hoffman, Henry Reed, George Hillard, and other distinguished men of letters, is second in interest and value to no series of original works ever printed in this country. There is little danger of estimating the la

bours of Mr. Sparks too highly. He at an early age entered with enthusiasm on his favourite pursuit, and has devoted to it the best years of his life. His researches have been prosecuted with untiring diligence, and with such success that almost every question within their scope, which was open at their commencement, has through them been definitively settled. We feel sure that the documentary evidence he brings to bear on any point is as full and satisfactory as can be had; and his mere opinion, observes one of our most acute and well informed critics, is entitled to great weight, when not supported by direct proof. His negative testimony, when he says nothing can be found to support an allegation, is nearly conclusive, for we are confident the assertion is not lightly made, and may fairly presume that what has escaped his researches does not exist.

The great merits of Mr. Sparks are reverence for truth, soundness of judgment in regard to evidence, and exhausting fulness of detail and illustration. His defect as a historian seems to be a certain timidity, an unwill

ingness to disturb old prejudices, which occasionally has prevented his removing masks behind which he himself has seen. A little more boldness, a determination to give the whole truth as well as nothing but the truth, would have proved as advantageous for the present and more so for the future.

The style of Mr. Sparks is clear and exact, but it has little variety or vivacity. He lacks skill in grouping, but compensates for this by the accuracy of his drawing, and the studied propriety of his costume. It is less probable that he will be a popular historian than that he will be an enduring and in many cases an ultimate authority.

Mr. Sparks is now engaged in writing a History of the American Revolution, and the work is looked for with interest by all who know how excellently he has been fitted for the labour, by twenty years' judicious study of our annals.

Mr. Sparks was appointed Professor of Ancient and Modern History in Harvard University, in 1839, and in 1849 he succeeded Mr. Everett as president of that institution.

AMERICAN HISTORY.

In many respects the history of North America differs from that of every other country, and in this difference it possesses an interest peculiar to itself, especially for those whose lot has been cast here, and who look back with a generous pride to the deeds of ancestors, by whom a nation's existence has been created, and a nation's glory adorned. We shall speak of this history, as divided into two periods, the Colonial, and the Revolutionary.

When we talk of the history of our country, we are not to be understood as alluding to any particular book, or to the labours of any man, or number of men, in treating this subject. If we have a few compilations of merit, embracing detached portions and limited periods, there is yet wanting a work, the writer of which shall undertake the task of plodding his way through all the materials, printed and in manuscript, and digesting them into a united, continuous, lucid, and philosophical whole, bearing the shape, and containing the substance of genuine history. No tempting encouragement, it is true, has been held out to such an enterprise. The absorbing present, in the midst of our stirring politics, and jarring party excitements, and bustling activity, has almost obliterated the past, or at least has left little leisure for pursuing the footsteps of the pilgrims, and the devious

Mr. William B. Reed. In the North American Review, and in various tracts, he has discussed several historical and social questions with signal ability.

fortunes of our ancestors. The public taste has run in other directions, and no man of genius and industry has been found so courageous in his resolves, or prodigal of his labour, as to waste his life in digging into mines for treasures, which would cost him much, and avail him little. But symptoms of a change are beginning to appear, which it may be hoped will ere long be realized.

And when the time shall come for illustrating this subject, it will be discovered, that there are rich stores of knowledge among the hidden and forgotten records of our colonial history; that the men of those days thought, and acted, and suffered with a wisdom, a fortitude, and an endurance, which would add lustre to any age; and that they have transmitted an inheritance as honourable in the mode of its acquisition as it is dear to its present possessors. Notwithstanding the comparatively disconnected incidents in the history of this period, and the separate communities and governments to which it extends, it has nevertheless a unity and a consistency of parts, as well as copiousness of events, which make it a theme for the most gifted historian, and a study for every one who would enlarge his knowledge and profit by high example.

Unlike any other people, who have attained the rank of a nation, we may here trace our country's growth to the very elements of its origin, and consult the testimonies of reality, instead of the blind oracles of fable, and the legends of a dubious tradition. Besides a love of adventure, and an enthusiasm that surmounted every difficulty, the cha

racter of its founders was marked by a hardy enterprise and sturdiness of purpose, which carried them onward through perils and sufferings, that would have appalled weaker minds and less resolute hearts. This is the first great feature of resemblance in all the early settlers, whether they came to the north or to the south, and it merits notice from the influence it could not fail to exercise on their future acts and character, both domestic and political. The timid, the wavering, the feebleminded, the sons of indolence and ease, were not among those who left the comforts of home, braved the tempests of the ocean, and sought danger on the shores of an unknown and inhospitable world. Incited by various motives they might have been; by a fondness for adventure, curiosity, gain, or a dread of oppression; yet none but the bold, energetic, determined, persevering, would yield to these motives or any other.

Akin to these characteristics, and indeed a concomitant with them, was a spirit of freedom, and a restlessness under constraint. The New England settlers, we know, came away on this ground alone, goaded to a sense of their invaded rights by the thorns of religious intolerance. But whatever motives may have operated, the prominent fact remains the same, and in this we may see throughout the colonies a uniform basis of that vigour of character, and indomitable love of liberty, which appeared ever afterwards, in one guise or another, whenever occasions called them out.

Hence it was, also, that the different colonies, although under dissimilar modes of government, some more and some less dependent on the crown, preserved a close resemblance in the spirit of their internal regulations, that spirit, or those principles, which entered deeply into the opinions of the people, and upon which their habits were formed.

Beginning every where in small bodies, elections implied almost a universal suffrage, and every individual became acquainted with his rights, and accustomed to use the power they gave him. Increase of numbers made no change in this respect. Charters were given and taken away, laws were annulled, and the King's judges decided against the colonial pretensions. The liberties of the mass were thus abridged, and the powers of legislation curtailed, but the people still went on, voting for their representatives and their municipal officers, and practising all the elementary acts of independent government; and the legislatures had new opportunities of asserting their rights before the world, studying them more deeply, watching over them more cautiously, and in this way gaining strength to their cause, through the agency of the very means that were employed to depress or destroy it. The primary elections were never reached by these oppressive measures of the supreme power, and, as they were founded on principles of close analogy in all the colonies, conformable to the circumstances of their origin, they were not only the guardian of the liberties of each, from its first foundation, but they became at last the cementing force, which bound them together, when a great and united effort was necessary.

Another element of unity in the colonial period was the fact of the colonists springing from the same stock; for although Holland, Germany and Sweden contributed a few settlers, yet the mass was of English origin, inheriting the free spirit that had been at work from the era of Runny Mead downwards, in building up the best parts of the British Constitution, and framing laws to protect them. The Sidneys, and Miltons, and Lockes of England were teachers in America as well as in their native land, and more effectual, because their instructions fell in a readier soil, and sprang up with a livelier and bolder growth. The books of England were the fountains of knowledge in America, from which all parts drew equally, imbibing common habitudes of thought and opinion, and an intellectual uniformity. Our fathers soon saw, that the basis of virtue, the security of civil order and freedom, must be laid in the intelligence of the people. Schools were established and means provided, not everywhere with a zeal so ardent, and a forethought so judicious, as among the descendants of the pilgrims, but yet in all places according to their situation, and the tendency of controlling

causes.

The colonial wars form another combining principle in the unity of that period, and furnish materials for vivid delineations of character and animated narrative. The English and French colonies were always doomed to espouse the quarrels and participate in the broils of their rival heads in Europe, who continued to nourish a root of bitterness, that left but few intervals of peace, and fewer still of harmonious feeling. When the fire of discord was kindled into open hostility, its flame soon reached America, and roused all hearts to the conflict. Louisburg and Nova Scotia, Lake George and Braddock's field, Oswego and Niagara, have witnessed the bravery of our ancestors, and the blood they expended, fighting the battles as well of transatlantic ambition as of self-defence.

But there was a great moral cause at work in this train of events. By these trials, costly and severe as they were, the colonists were learning the extent of their physical resources, acting as one people, gaining the experience and nerving the sinews, that were at a future day to serve them in a mightier contest. Much blood was shed, but it was the price of future glory to their country; many a fair flower was cut off in the freshness of its bloom, many a sturdy oak was felled in the majesty of its strength, yet posterity will not forget the maxim of the Roman law, that they, who fall for their country, live in the immortality of their fame.

Next come the Indian wars, which commenced with the first landing of the pilgrim wanderers, and ceased not till the proud sons of the forest had melted away like an evening cloud, or disappeared in the remote solitudes of their own wildernesses. The wars of the Indians, their character and manners, their social and political condition, are original, having no prototype in any former time or race of men. They mingle in all the incidents of our colonial history, and stamp upon it an impression novel and peculiar.