common sense.' The only question we have to ask is, whether our best writers and speakers have adopted them; and, if they have not, we of necessity pronounce them to be corruptions. The utmost concession we could make in such a case, would be to imitate the courteous Parisian's observation on a phrase of Dr. Moore's: "It is not French, but it deserves to be so." If these innovations proceed in either country to such an extent as to cause a material difference between the languages, how idle to ask which is the better English. The better English will always be the English of the British court and senate, and of distinguished British authors; while the language of America, with all its appeals to "philology and common sense," must submit to be termed a dialect. If America be ambitious of forming a language that shall rival or supersede the parent-tongue, there is indeed one (and only one) mode of accomplishing her object; but that she will find to be a work of far more difficulty than the Boston reviewer appears to have suspected. When we speak of the period at which a language becomes fixed, we seldom annex a very definite or accurate meaning to the expression. Its more ordinary signification we imagine to be, that in grammatical correctness, in elegance, and in strength, the language has then arrived at its acmè of perfection: but, in this point of view, we are too apt to confine our attention to certain inherent qualities in the language, which, having attained a particular point, are supposed to be incapable of farther improvement. The true mode, however, of considering the question is, to advert to the genius of the writers who have thus far moulded the language to their purposes. The greatest writers in any language, let them appear when they will, fix that language; that is, they leave in their works models of thought and composition, which their successors cannot surpass, and which are, for that reason, ever after referred to as standards of unequalled excellence. They become the manuals of students, or, in other words, the classics of the language. Now when we say, that those writers fix their language, we in reality mean, that the mind of their country reaches, in their persons, its highest point. The Greek tongue was fixed by a group of writers who flourished about the time of Socrates; but, had the freedom of Athens continued, and her intellect advanced-had a race of authors in after-times sprung up, more eloquent than Demosthenes, more profound and imaginative than Plato, more elegantly flowing than Xenophon-no matter how many innovations the lapse of years might have introduced, these latter would have been the fixers of the language; and innumerable words and phrases in the writings of their predecessors, which are now admired for their purity, would pass for obsolete or uncouth. But no such event occurred. The genius of Greece could not survive her freedom. The successors of the classic age were not sparing of innovation; but the mind that could have sanctified the changes was wanting, and that noble language which, in its better days, had been pronounced to be a vehicle of thought "fit for the gods," became, in its latter periods, feeble, bloated, and deformed; and, after dragging out a precarious existence, finally expired, some centuries too late for its glory. Now, in this case, (or in that of the Latin language, whose history is the same) we can at once refer to an unalterable standard of purity: for the genius of those countries has run its course, and its highest possible attainments are clearly ascertained. Homer and Plato, Cicero and Virgil, are, in this respect, fixed upon an eminence, from which nothing but "the oblivion of all things" can displace them. But with a living language like our own, it is otherwise. While English continues to be written and spoken, no one can assert that it is absolutely fixed our classic models, a century hence, may be very different from those of the present day; and we must hope that it may be so, for unless we presume upon a deplorable degeneracy of taste in our posterity, it will be a proof that the mind of England gathers strength as it moves along. Deeply as we venerate the names of Shakspeare and Milton, we must not forget what a glorious event it would be in our history to give birth to spirits that could soar above them, and whose higher conceptions would require to be conveyed in expressions of yet undiscovered brilliancy and vigour. But it is only by great writers that any permanent and authoritative innovations can be made. In order, therefore, to give a general currency to the fluctuations of our language that may take place in America, it is indispensable that she shall produce writers surpassing in genius every contemporary and preceding author of Great Britain. As long as the productions of this country continue superior, or equal, they will be resorted to by natives and strangers as the fountains of the language. Of this privilege America cannot deprive us by any sullen rejection of the novelties we may introduce, or by coining new terms for the uses of her citizens, with the pompous impression of " philology and common sense." Her language, to be entitled to precedence, must make its claim through generations of American writers, more divine than Shakspeare, deeper and more comprehensive than Bacon, more sublime than Milton, more "winning soft" than Addison, more tersely splenetic than Junius, and more excellent, in their respective kinds, than the many admirable masters of the British tongue that have followed, and (we trust) are yet to come-then may America, with some reason, contest our right to controul her phraseology; but until that period shall arrive, her critics must not be accusing us of " mere arrogant pedantry," because we make the language of our scholars and men of genius our standard of English diction, and are determined to exclude from our lips and books every obsolete or new-fangled dialect that may have local sway in Philadelphia or at the sources of the Missouri. Should these and the preceding observations chance to fall under the eye of an American, he may, perhaps, imagine that we too have been indulging in offensive animadversions upon his nation; but we sincerely assure him, that we have no intention to offend. We think that America is doing wonders, and we most heartily congratulate her. We cannot for an instant doubt, that the formation of a great empire, resembling in its best points the best times of Great Britain, must prove an aupicious era in the history of the human race. A community, provided with ample resources against an endless increase of members, and enjoying a free bar, a free senate, and a free press, if true to itself, must do great things. But America is yet in her infancy, and must not, like a froward child, born to a great estate and the dupe of domestic adulators, immaturely assume the tone and pretensions of a riper period; she must be docile and industrious, and patient of rebuke that conveys instruction. She must not talk too much of her glory, till it comes. She must not make fine speeches about freedom, while a slave contaminates her soil. She must not rail at English travellers for visiting her cities and plantations, and publishing what they see. She must not be angry with Lord Grey for calling Mr. Fearon "a gentleman* ;" and she positively must not be fretting herself into the preposterous notion, that there exists in this country an organised conspiracy against her literary fame. There is no such thing. For ourselves, we can say, that on a late occasion, we felt unfeigned zeal in offering a voluntary tribute to the memory of an American man of genius+; and that we shall be at all times ready to resume so pleasing an office; while, on the part of others, we can refer to the universal praises now bestowing upon the elegant productions of Mr. Washington Irving, as a proof that American talent has nothing to apprehend from the imputed jealousy and injustice of English criticism. * "Gentleman, as Lord Grey calls Fearon."-North American Review. WINTER. THE mill-wheel 's frozen in the stream, And hark, how the cold winds blow! There goes the squire to shoot at snipe, You'd swear his breath was the smoke of a pipe, Hodge is breaking the ice for the kine, Old and young cough as they go, The round red sun forgets to shine, And hark, how the cold winds blow! In short, Mr. Editor, winter is come at last-a mighty evil to the shivering hypochondriacs, who are glad to catch at any excuse to be miserable; but a visitation which, by those who are in no actual danger of dining with Duke Humphrey, or of being driven, from lack of raiment, to join in the exclamation of poor Tom, may very appropriately be hailed in the language of Satan, "Evil, be thou my good.". The Spaniards have a proverb, that God sends the cold according to the clothes; and though the callousness and hardihood acquired by the ragged be the effect of exposure, and not an exemption from the general susceptibility, the adage is not the less true, and illustrates that beneficent provision of Nature, which, operating in various ways, compensates the poor for their apparent privations; converts the abused luxuries of the rich into severe correctives, and thus pretty nearly equalizes, through the various classes of mortals, the individual portions of suffering and enjoyment. In the distribution of the seasons, care seems to have been taken that mankind should have the full benefit of this system of equivalents. To an admirer of Nature, it is certainly melancholy to be no longer able to see the lusty green boughs wrestling with the wind, or dancing in the air to the sound of their own music; to lose the song of the lark, the nightingale, the blackbird, and the thrush; the sight of the waving corn, the green and flowery fields, the rich landscape, the blue and sunny skies. It appears a woful contrast, when the glorious sun and the azure face of heaven are perpetually hidden from us by a thick veil of fog; when the poached and swampy fields are silent and desolate, and seem, with a scowl, to warn us off their premises; when the leafless trees stand like gaunt skeletons, while their offspring leaves are lying at their feet, buried in a winding-sheet of snow. There is a painful sense of imposition, too, in feeling that you are paying taxes for windows which afford you no light; that, for the bright and balmy breathings of Heaven, you are presented with a thick yellow atmosphere, which irritates your eyes, without assisting them to see. Well, I admit that we must betake ourselves, in-doors, to our shaded lamps and our snug firesides. There is no great hardship in that: but, Mr. Editor, our minds are driven in-doors also, they are compelled to look inwards, to draw from their internal resources; and I do contend that this is the unlocking of a more glorious mental world, abundantly atoning for all our external annoyances, were they even ten times more offensive. That man must have a poor and frozen fancy who does not possess a sun and moon obedient to his own will, which he can order to arise with much less difficulty than he can ring up his servants on these dark mornings; and as to woods, lakes, and mountains, he who cannot conjure them up to his mind's eye with all their garniture and glory, as glibly as he can pronounce the words, may depend upon it that he is-no conjurer. It is well-known, that in our dreams objects are presented to us with more vivid brilliancy and effect than they ever assume to our ordinary perceptions, and the imaginary landscapes that glitter before us in our waking dreams are unquestionably more enchanting than even the most picturesque reality. They are poetical exaggerations of beauty, the beau ideal of nature. Then is it that a vivacious and creative faculty springs up within us, whose omnipotent and magic wand, like the sword of harlequin, can convert a Lapland hut into the Athenian Parthenon, and transform the desolate snowclad hills of Siberia, with their boors and bears, into the warm and sunny vale of the Thessalian Tempe, where, through the glimpses of the pines, we see a procession of shepherds and shepherdesses marching to offer sacrifice in the temple of Pan, while the air brings to us, at intervals, the faint sound of the hymn they are chanting. There was nothing ridiculous in the saying of the clown, who complained that he could not see London for the houses. Mine is a similar predicament in the month of June; I cannot see such landscapes as I have been describing, on account of the trees and fields that surround me. The real shuts out the ideal. The Vale of Health upon Hampstead Heath deprives me, for months together, of the Vale of Tempe; and the sand-boys and girls, with their donkies, drive away Pegasus upon a full gallop, and eject the nymphs and fauns from the sanctuary of my mind. The corporeal eye puts out the mental one: I am obliged to take pastoral objects as |