to set up Cæsar, a demagogue, to be a mon- | arch, a master; pour mettre chacun a sa place. Here you have the origin of all artificial aristocracy, which is the origin of all monarchies. And both artificial aristocracy and monarchy, and civil, military, political, and hierarchical despotisms, have all grown out of the natural aristocracy of virtues and talents. We, to be sure, are far remote from this. Many hundred years must roll away, before we shall be corrupted. Our pure, virtuous, public-spirited, federative republic will last forever, govern the globe, and introduce the perfection of man; his perfectibility being already proved by Price, Priestley, Condorcet, Rousseau, Diderot, and Godwin. Mischief has been done by the Senate of the United States. I have known and felt more of this mischief, than Washington, Jefferson, and Madison, all together. But this has been all caused by the constitutional power of the Senate, in executive business, which ought to be immediately, totally and essentially abolished. Your distinction between the Apistol and Yeudo apıçтou will not help the matter. I would trust one as well as the other with unlimited power. The law wisely refuses an oath as a witness in his own case, to the saint as well as the sinner. No romance would be more amusing than the history of your Virginian and our New England aristocratical families. Yet even in Rhode Island there has been no clergy, no church, and I had almost said no State, and some people say no religion. There has been a constant respect for certain old families. Fifty-seven or fifty-eight years ago, in company with Colonel, Counsellor, Judge John Chandler, whom I have quoted before, a newspaper was brought in. The old sage asked me to look for the news from Rhode Island, and see how the elections had gone there. I read the list of Waubuns, Watrous, Greens, Whipples, Malbones, &c. "I expected as much," said the aged gentleman "for I have always been of the opinion that in the most popular governments, the elections will generally go in favor of the most ancient families." To this day, when any one of these tribes-and we may add Ellerys, Channings, Champlins, &c.,-are pleased to fall in with the popular current, they are sure to carry all before them. You suppose a difference of opinion between you and me on the subject of aristocracy. I can find none. I dislike and detest hereditary honors, offices, emoluments, established by law. So do you. I am for ex cluding legal, hereditary distinctions from the United States as long as possible. So are you. I only say that mankind have not yet discovered any remedy against irresistible corruption in elections to offices of great power and profit, but making them here ditary. But will you say our elections are pure? Be it so, upon the whole; but do you recol lect in history a more corrupt election than that of Aaron Burr to be President, or that of De Witt Clinton last year? By corruption here, I mean a sacrifice of every national in terest and honor to private and party objects. I see the same spirit in Virginia that you and I see in Rhode Island, and the rest of New England. In New York it is a struggle of family feuds-a feudal aristocracy. Pennsylvania is a contest between German, Irish, and old England families. When Germans and Irish unite they give 30,000 majorities. There is virtually a white rose and a red rose, a Cæsar and a Pompey, in every State in this Union, and contests and dissensions will be as lasting. The rivalry of Bourbons and Noailleses produced the French revolution, and a similar competition for consideration and influence exists and prevails in every village in the world. Where will terminate the rabies agri? The continent will be scattered over with manors much larger than Livingston's, Van Rensselaer's, or Philips's; even our Deacon Strong will have a principality among you Southern folk. What inequality of talents will be produced by these land jobbers. Where tends the mania of banks? At my table in Philadelphia I once proposed to you to unite in endeavors to obtain an amendment of the constitution prohibiting to the separate States the power of creating banks; but giving Congress authority to establish one bank with a branch in each State, the whole limited to ten millions of dollars. Whether this project is wise or unwise, I know not, for I had deliberated little on it then and have never thought it worth thinking of since. But you spurned the proposition from you with disdain. This system of banks begotten, brooded and hatched by Duer, Robert and Gouverneur Morris, Hamilton and Washington, I have always considered as a system of national injustice. A sacrifice of public and private interest to a few aristocratical friends and favorites. My scheme could have had no such effect. Verres plundered temples and robbed a few rich men, but he never made such ravages among private property in gen eral, nor swindled so much out of the pockets | of the poor, and middle class of people, as these banks have done. No people but this would have borne the imposition so long. The people of Ireland would not bear Wood's half-pence. What inequalities of talent have been introduced into this country by these aristocratical banks. Our Winthrops, Winslows, Bradfords, Saltonstalls, Quincys, Chandlers, Leonards, Hutchinsons, Olivers, Sewalls, &c., are precisely in the situation of your Randolphs, Carters, and Burwells, and Harrisons. Some of them unpopular from the part they took in the late revolution, but all respected for their names and connections; and whenever they fell in with the popular sentiments are preferred, ceteris paribus, to all others. When I was young the summum bonum in Massachusetts was to be worth £10,000 sterling, ride in a chariot, be Colonel of a regiment of militia, and hold a seat in his Majesty's council. No man's imagination aspired to anything higher beneath the skies. But these plumes, chariots, colonelships, and counsellorships, are recorded and will never be forgotten. No great accumulations of land were made by our early settlers. Mr. Baudoin, a French refugee, made the first great purchases, and your General Dearborn, born under a fortunate star, is now enjoying a large portion of the aristocratic sweets of them. was to have been, in the outlaw Robin Hood." "Ay, ay," said the baron, "I have recog nized you long ago." "And recognize your young friend Gamwell," said the second, "in the outlaw Scarlet." "And Little John, the page," said the third, "in Little John the outlaw." "And Father Michael of Rubygill Ab bey," said the friar, "in Friar Tuck of Sherwood Forest. Truly I have a chapel here hard by in the shape of a hollow tree, where I put up my prayers for travellers, and Little John holds the plate at the door, for good praying deserves good paying." I am in fine company," said the baron. "In the very best of company," said the friar; "in the high court of Nature, and in the midst of her own nobility. Is it not so? This goodly grove is our palace; the oak and the beech are its colonnade and its canopy; the sun, and the moon, and the stars, are its everlasting lamps; the grass and the daisy and the primrose, and the violet, are its manycoloured floor of green, white, yellow and blue; the Mayflower, and the woodbine, and the eglantine, and the ivy, are its decorations, its curtains, and its tapestry; the lark and the thrush, and the linnet, and the nightingale, are its unhired minstrels and musicians. Robin Hood is king of the forest both by dignity of birth and by virtue of his standing army, to say nothing of the free choice of his people, which he has indeed; but I pass it by as an illegitimate basis of power. He holds his dominion FREEBOOTER LIFE IN THE FOREST. over the forest, and its horned multitude of [THOMAS L. PEACOCK, an English novelist and poet (1788-1866) held office in the India House, and occupied his hours of leisure in producing various entertaining and satirical works, full of classical allusion, redundant fashioned thinker, wedded to the gentilities and spirit fancy, and keen observation. Peacock was an old of the eighteenth century, and devoted much space in his novels to ridiculing the progressive, scientific and reformatory tendencies of the nineteenth century. He wrote “Headlong Hall" (1815), "Melincourt" (1817), "Nightmare Abbey" (1818), "Maid Marian" (1822), *Orotchet Castle" (1831), and “Gryll Grange” (1860).] The baron, with some of his retainers, and all the foresters, halted at daybreak in Sherwood Forest. The foresters quickly erected tents, and prepared an abundant breakfast of venison and ale. "Now, Lord Fitzwater," said the chief forester, recognize your son-in-law that citizen-deer and its swinish multitude of peasantry of wild boars, by right of con- From "Maid Marian," Sherwood? William fought for his claim. | misnomer. I sprinkle not thy forehead So does Robin. With whom both? With with water, but thy lips with wine, and bap any that would or will dispute it. William tize thee MARIAN." raised contributions. So does Robin. From whom both? From all that they could or can make pay them. Why did any pay them to William? Why do any pay them to Robin? For the same reason to both-because they POETRY. FROM "GRYLL GRANGE," BY THOMAS PEACOCK. could not or cannot help it. They differ, in- TRUTH TO NATURE ESSENTIAL IN deed, in this, that William took from the poor and gave to the rich, and Robin takes from the rich and gives to the poor; and therein is Robin illegitimate, though in all else he is true prince. Scarlet and John, are they not peers of the forest?-lords temporal of Sherwood? And am not I lord spiritual? Am I not archbishop? Am I not Pope? Do I not consecrate their banner and absolve their sins? Are not they State, and am not I Church? Are not they State monarchical, and am not I Church militant? Do I not excommunicate our victims from venison and brawn, and, by'r Lady! when need calls, beat them down under my feet? The State levies tax, and the Church levies tithe. Even so do we. Mass-we take all at once. What then? Is not tax by redemption and tithe by commutation? Your William and Richard can cut and come again, but our Robin deals with slippery subjects that come not twice to his exchequer. What need we, then, to constitute a court, except a fool and a laureate? For the fool, his only use is to make false knaves merry by art, and we are true men, and are merry by nature. For the laureate, his only office is to find virtues in those who have none, and to drink sack for his pains. We have quite virtue enough to need him not, and can drink our sack for ourselves." "Well preached, friar," said-Robin Hood; "yet there is one thing wanting to constitute a court, and that is a queen. And now, lovely Matilda, look round upon these sylvan shades, where we so often have roused the stag from his ferny covert. The rising sun smiles upon us through the stems of that beechen knoll. Shall I take your hand, Matilda, in the presence of this my court? Shall I crown you with our wildwood coronal, and hail you Queen of the Forest? Will you be the Queen Matilda of your own true King Robin?" Matilda smiled assent. "Not Matilda," said the friar: "the rules of our holy alliance require new birth. We have excepted in favour of Little John, because he is Great John, and his name is a Miss Ilex. Few may perceive an inaccuracy, but to those who do, it causes a great diminution, if not a total destruction, of pleasure in perusal. Shakspeare never makes a flower blossom out of season! Wordsworth, Coleridge, and Southey are true to nature in this and in all other respects, even in their wildest imaginings. The Rev. Dr. Opimian. Yet there is a combination, by one of our greatest poets, of flowers that never blossom in the same season: Bring the rathe primrose that forsaken dies, The musk-rose, and the well-attired woodbine, And at the same time he plucks the berries of the myrtle and the ivy. Miss Ilex. Very beautiful, if not true to English seasons; but Milton might have combination in Arcadia. Generally, he is thought himself justified in making this strictly accurate, to a degree that is in itself a beauty. For instance, in his address to the nightingale: Thee, chauntress, oft the woods among, On the dry smooth-shaven green. The song of the nightingale ceases about the time that the grass is mown. The Rev. Dr. Opimian. The old Greek poetry is always true to nature, and will bear any degree of critical analysis. I must say I take no pleasure in poetry that will not. Mr. Mac-Borrowdale. No poet is truer to nature than Burns, and no one less so than Moore. His imagery is almost always | Ptolemies were Greeks, and whoever will false. Here is a highly applauded stanza, and very taking at first sight: The night-dew of heaven, though in silence it weeps, But it will not bear analysis. The dew is The Rev. Dr. Opimian. There are inac A curacies more offensive to me than even false imagery. Here is one in a song which I have often heard with displeasure. young man goes up a mountain, and as he goes higher and higher, he repeats Excelsior! but excelsior is only taller in the comparison of things on a common basis, not higher as a detached object in the air. Jack's bean-stalk was excelsior the higher it grew, but Jack himself was no more celsus at the top than he had been at the bottom. if Mr. Mac-Borrowdale. I am afraid, doctor, you look for profound knowledge in popular poetry, you will often be disappointed. The Rev. Dr. Opimian. I do not look for profound knowledge; but I do expect that poets should understand what they talk of. Burns was not a scholar, but he was always master of his subject. All the scholarship of the world would not have produced Tam o' Shanter, but in the whole of that poem there is not a false image nor a misused word. What do you suppose these lines represent? I turning saw, throned on a flowery rise, eyes, Mr. Mac-Borrowdale. I should take it to be a description of the Queen of Bambo. The Rev. Dr. Opimian. Yet thus one of our most popular poets describes Cleopatra, and one of our most popular artists has illustrated the description by a portrait of a hideous grinning Ethiop! Moore led the way to this perversion by demonstrating that the Egyptian women must have been beautiful because they were "the country. women of Cleopatra." Here we have a sort of counter-demonstration that Cleopatra must have been a fright because she was the countrywoman of the Egyptians. But Cleopatra was a Greek, the daughter of Ptolemy Auletes and a lady of Pontus. The look at their genealogy, their coins, and their medals, will see how carefully they kept their pure blood uncontaminated by African intermixture. Think of this description and this picture applied to one who, Dio saysand all antiquity confirms him-was the most superlatively beautiful of women, splendid to see, and delightful to hear." For she was eminently accomplished; she spoke many languages with grace and facility. Her mind was as wonderful as her personal beauty. THE MITHERLESS BAIRN. every effort to place him in a situation of permanent Her spirit that passed in yon hour o❜ his birth, Still watches his wearisome wanderings on earth; He bends to your bidding, an' blesses your smile; That God deals the blow for the mitherless bairn! *This word not found in Burns, is the same as frack active, vigorous. NOTHING TO WEAR. Miss Flora McFlimsey, of Madison Square, At all hours of the day, and in all sorts of weather, And yet, though scarce three months have passed since the day All this merchandise went in twelve carts up Broadway, But the fair Flora's case is by no means surprising; From this unsupplied destitution of dress; Oh, ladies, dear ladies, the next sunny day Please trundle your hoops just out of Broadway, To the alleys and lanes where misfortune and guilt Their children have gathered, their hovels have built; Where hunger and vice, like twin beasts of prey, Have hunted their victims to gloom and despair; Raise the rich, dainty dress, and the fine broidered skirt, Pick your delicate way through the dampness and dirt; Grope through the dark dens, climb the rickety stair To the garret, where wretches, the young and the old, Half starved and half naked, lie crouched from the cold; See those skeleton limbs, those frost-bitten feet, All bleeding and bruised by the stones of the street, Then home to your wardrobes, and say, if you dare,Spoiled children of fashion,-you've nothing to wear! And, oh, if perchance there should be a sphere, Where all is made right which so puzzles us here; Where the glare, and the glitter, and tinsel of time Fade and die in the light of that region sublime; Where the soul, disenchanted of flesh and of sense, Unscreened by its trappings, and shows, and pretence, Must be clothed for the life and the service above, With purity, truth, faith, meekness, and love; Oh, daughters of earth! foolish virgins, beware! Lest, in that upper realm,—you have nothing to wear! WM. ALLEN BUTLER. ALPINE HEIGHTS. On Alpine heights the love of God is shed; On Alpine heights a loving Father dwells. On Alpine heights, o'er many a fragant heath, The loveliest breezes breathe; So free and pure the air, His breath seems floating there. On Alpine heights a loving Father dwells. On Alpine heights, beneath his mild blue eye, The soaring glacier's ice On Alpine heights a loving Father dwells. Down Alpine heights the silvery streamlets flow; There the bold chamois go; On giddy crags they stand, And drink from his own hand. On Alpine heights a loving Father dwells On Alpine heights, in troops all white as snow He fills their hearts with food. On Alpine heights a loving Father dwells. On Alpine heights the herdsman tends his herd; Will sure his offspring keep. On Alpine heights a loving Father dwells. From the German of Krummacher, THE BRAVE OLD OAK. A song to the oak, the brave old oak, There's fear in his frown when the sun goes down, Then here's to the oak, the brave old oak, In the days of old, when the spring with cold |