Chapter XIII: Esther's Narrative (3)

The intelligence from England extends from the 19th of April to the 22d of May, and embraces several items of more than ordinary interest. Parliament re-assembled on the day first named, after the holiday recess. In the House of Commons a committee was appointed, to inquire into the condition of the British Empire in India,--after a speech upon that subject from the President of the Board of Control, who took occasion to say that the affairs of that country had never before stood upon so good a footing, or in a position so well calculated to develop its resources. There were now 2846 natives employed in administrative offices, and forty educational establishments had been endowed, in which the instruction given was of the highest character.----On the 22d, Mr. Milner Gibson submitted a motion adverse to continuing the duty upon paper, the stamp duties upon newspapers, and the advertisement taxes. The proposition gave rise to a protracted discussion, in which the injurious character of these duties, in restricting the general diffusion of knowledge among the poorer classes of the English people, was very generally admitted, and a wish was expressed on all sides to have them removed. But the Chancellor of the Exchequer feared the effect of such a step upon the revenue of the kingdom--which the proposal would sacrifice to the extent of a million and a half of pounds. Upon his motion the debate was adjourned until the 12th of May, when it was renewed. Mr. Gladstone spoke earnestly in exposition of the depressing influence of these taxes upon the production and sale of books, but conceded full weight to the financial reasons which had been urged against their removal. The vote was then taken, first, upon the motion to abolish the paper duty as soon as it could be done with safety to the revenue: which received ayes, 107--noes, 195; being lost by a majority of 88; next, upon the abolition of the stamp duty on newspapers; for which there were ayes, 100--noes, 199: majority against it, 99; and lastly, upon the motion to abolish the tax upon advertisements, for which there were 116 ayes, and 181 noes, and which was thus rejected by a majority of 65.----On the 23d of April, the Militia Bill came up; and was supported by the Ministerial party, and opposed by the late Ministers. Lord John Russell opposed it, because he deemed it inadequate to the emergency. The 41,000 infantry which it proposed to raise, he deemed insufficient, and the character of the force provided, he feared would make it unreliable. Lord Palmerston vindicated the bill against Lord John's objections, and thought it at once less expensive and more efficient than the one submitted by the late government. On the 26th, to which the debate was adjourned, after further discussion, the second reading of the bill was carried by 315 to 105.----The bill came up again on the 6th, when Mr. Disraeli declared that its main object was to habituate the people of Great Britain to the use of arms, and thus to lay the foundation of a constitutional system of national defense. He did not claim that the bill would at once produce a disciplined army, able to encounter the veteran legions of the world; but it would be a step in the right direction. After the debate, an amendment, moved by Mr. Gibson, that the words 80,000 should not form part of the bill, was rejected, 106 to 207. On the 13th, the debate was renewed, and several other amendments, designed to embarrass the bill, were rejected. But up to our latest dates, the vote on its final passage had not been taken.----On the 10th of May, the Ministry was defeated, upon a motion of the Chancellor of the Exchequer for leave to bring in a bill to assign the four seats in Parliament, which would be vacated if the bill for the disfranchisement of the borough of St. Albans should pass. He proposed to assign two of these seats to the West-Riding of Yorkshire, and the other two to the southern division of the county of Lancaster. The motion was lost: receiving 148 votes in favor, and 234 against it--being an anti-Ministerial majority of 86.----The Tenant Right Bill, intended to meliorate the condition of land cultivators in Ireland, was rejected on the 5th, by a vote of 57 to 167, upon the second reading.----The Court of Exchequer having decided against the right of Alderman Salomons to take his seat in Parliament, Lord Lyndhurst has introduced a bill to remove Jewish disabilities.----The Duke of Argyle called attention, on the 17th, to the case of Mr. Murray, an Englishman, who was said to have been imprisoned for several years in Rome, without a trial, and to be now lying under sentence of death. The Earl of Malmesbury said that strenuous efforts had been made to procure reliable information upon this case; but that great difficulty had been experienced, in consequence of the very defective and unworthy provisions which existed for diplomatic intercourse with the Roman government. The Duke of Argyle thought that the English government owed to its own dignity some energetic action upon this case. The correspondence upon this subject, as also that with Austria upon the expulsion of Protestant missionaries from that country, was promised at an early day. On the 27th of April, Mr. Disraeli, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, made the annual statement of the financial condition and necessities of the kingdom, which had been awaited with great interest, as an official announcement of the intended course of the new Ministry upon the subject of taxation. He discussed, in succession, the three modes of deriving income--from duties on imports, duties on domestic manufactures, and direct taxation. During the last ten years, under the policy established in 1842 by Sir Robert Peel, the duties upon corn and other articles of import, have been reduced, in the aggregate, upward of nine million pounds sterling; and this reduction had been so steadily and regularly made every year, that any proposition to restore them would now have very slight chances of success. In the excise duties, also, there had been reductions to the amount of a million and a half; and it was clear that the Minister who should propose to increase the revenue by adding to the duties on domestic manufactures, could not expect to be sustained by the House or the country. The income tax had been very unpopular, and could only be renewed last year, for a single year, and then with very considerable modifications. Comparing the actual income of the past year, with that which had been estimated, Mr. Disraeli said that, while it had been estimated at £52,140,000, the actual income had been £52,468,317, notwithstanding the loss of £640,000 by the change of the house tax for the window duty, and the reduction in the coffee, timber, and sugar duties. The customs had been estimated to produce £20,000,000. After deducting the anticipated loss, £400,000, on account of the three last-named duties, they had produced £20,673,000; and the consumption of the articles on which the duties had been reduced had increased--foreign coffee by 3,448,000 lbs., as compared with 1851, when the higher and differential duty prevailed; and colonial coffee from 28,216,000 lbs. to 29,130,000 lbs. Foreign sugar had increased in the last year by 412,000 cwts., and since 1846 (when the first reduction took place) by 1,900,000 cwts. a year; British colonial sugar, by upward of 114,000 in 1852, as compared with 1851; and during the last six years the consumption had increased 95,000 tons, or 33 per cent. on the consumption of 1846; and in timber the result was the same. The other heads of revenue had been thus estimated: Excise, £14,543,000; stamps, £6,310,000; taxes, £4,348,000; property tax, £5,380,000; Post-office, £830,000; Woods and Forests, £160,000; miscellaneous, £262,000; old stores, £450,000; and had produced respectively £14,543,000, £6,346,000, £3,691,000, £5,283,000, £1,056,000, £150,000, £287,000, and £395,000. The expenditure of the year, estimated at £50,247,000, had been £50,291,000, and the surplus in hand was £2,176,988. The expenditure for the current year he estimated at £51,163,979, including an additional vote to be proposed of £200,000 for the Kaffir war, and another of £350,000 for the expenses of the militia. The income, which in some items had been increased by the Exhibition last year, was estimated for the next year thus--Customs, £20,572,000; Excise, £14,604,000; stamps, £6,339,000; taxes, £3,090,000; property tax (the half-year), £2,641,500; Post-office, £938,000; Woods and Forests, £235,000; miscellaneous, £260,000; old stores, £400,000; total, £48,983,000, exhibiting a deficiency of £2,180,479, which would be increased in the next year by the total loss of the income tax, supposing it not to be renewed, to £4,400,000. If, however, that tax were re-imposed, he calculated it would produce net £5,187,000, which would give a gross income, from all sources, of £51,625,000, the surplus would then be £461,021. And though it would give him great pleasure to re-adjust the burdens of taxation fairly and equally on all classes, and all interests, yet, seeing the position of the finances, and the difficulty, if not impossibility, of dealing with the subject in the present state of feeling in the House and the country, he felt bound to propose the re-imposition of the property and income tax for a further limited period of one year. This statement was received by the House, as by the whole country, as embodying a substantial tribute from the Protectionist Ministry to the soundness of the Free Trade policy and to the necessity of leaving it undisturbed.

The annual dinner of the Royal Academy was attended on the 1st with more than usual eclat. Sir Charles Eastlake presided, and proposed the health of the Duke of Wellington, who duly acknowledged the compliment. The Earl of Derby was present, and spoke encouragingly of the prospect of having a better building soon erected for the accommodation of the Academy's works. Pleasant compliments were exchanged between Disraeli and Lord John Russell, and speeches were made by sundry other dignitaries who were in attendance.----At the Lord Mayor's dinner, on the 8th, the festivities partook more of a political character. The Earl of Derby spoke long and eloquently of the nature of the British Government, urging that in all its various departments it was a compromise between conflicting expedients and a system of mutual concessions between apparently conflicting interests. Count Walewski, the French Minister, congratulated the company on the good understanding which prevailed between France and England, and Mr. Disraeli spoke of the House of Commons as a true republic--"the only republic, indeed, that exists founded upon the principles of liberty, equality, and fraternity; but liberty there was maintained by order--equality is mitigated by good taste, and fraternity takes the shape of cordial brotherhood."----The anniversary dinner of the Royal Literary Fund took place on the 12th, and was chiefly distinguished by an amusing speech from Thackeray.

An important collision has occurred between the book publishers in London and the retail booksellers, which has engrossed attention to no inconsiderable extent. The publishers, it seems, have been in the habit of fixing a retail price upon their books, and then selling them to dealers at a deduction of twenty-five per cent. Some of the latter, thinking to increase their sales thereby, have contented themselves with a smaller rate of profit, and have sold their books at less than the price fixed by the publishers. Against this the latter have taken active measures of remonstrance, having formed an association among themselves, and agreed to refuse to deal with booksellers who should thus undersell the regular trade. On the other hand the retail dealers have held meetings to assert their rights, and one of them, held on the 4th, was attended by a very large number of the authors and men of letters interested in the question. Mr. Dickens presided, and a characteristic letter was read from Mr. Carlyle, who was warmly in favor of the objects of the meeting, though he thought many other things necessary to give authors their proper position in society. The rights of the case were submitted to Lord Campbell, Mr. Grote, and Dr. Milman, who heard both sides argued, and gave a decision on the 18th, on all points _against_ the regulations for which the publishers contended.

Very sad intelligence has reached England of the fate of a party of seven missionaries, who were sent out by the Protestant Missionary Society, in 1850, to Patagonia. Captain Gardiner was at the head of the band. The vessel that took them out landed at Picton Island, off the southern coast of Terra del Fuego, on the 6th of December, 1850, and kept hovering about to see how they were likely to be received. The natives seemed menacing: but on the 18th of December the missionaries left the ship, and with their stores of provisions, Bibles, &c., embarked in two boats, meaning to make for the coast of Terra del Fuego. On the 19th the ship sailed; and no news of them having reached England, the ship _Dido_ was ordered by the Admiralty in October, 1850, to touch there, and ascertain their fate. The _Dido_ reached the coast in January, and after ten or twelve days of search, on a rock near where they first landed on Picton Island, a writing was found directing them to go to Spaniard Harbor, on the opposite Fuegan coast. Here were found, near a large cavern, the unburied bodies of Captain Gardiner and another of the party; and the next day the bodies of three others were found. A manuscript journal, kept by Captain Gardiner, down to the last day when, only two or three days before his death, he became too weak to write, was also found, from which it appeared that the parties were driven off by the natives whenever they attempted to land; that they were thus compelled to go backward and forward in their boats, and at last took refuge in Spaniard harbor, as the only spot where they could be safe; that they lived there eight months, partly in a cavern and partly under shelter of one of the boats, and that three of them died by sickness, and the others by literal and lingering starvation. Four months elapsed between the death of the last of the party and the discovery of their bodies. The publication of the journal of Captain Gardiner, in which profound piety is shown mingled with his agonizing grief, has excited a deep sensation throughout England.----An explosion occurred in a coal pit in the Aberdare valley, South Wales, on the 10th, by which sixty-four lives were lost; another pit near Pembrey filled with water the same night, and twenty-seven men were drowned.----The fate of the Crystal Palace was sealed by a vote in the House of Commons of 103 to 221 on a proposition to provide for its preservation. It has been sold, and is to be forthwith taken down, and re-erected out of town, for a winter garden.----A memorial numerously and most respectably signed, was presented to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, on the 17th of May, praying that the Queen would extend clemency to the Irish State prisoners now in exile at Van Dieman's Land. The Lord Lieutenant, in a brief and direct speech, declined to lay the memorial before her Majesty, on the ground that the exiles in question deserved no further clemency at her hands. He noticed, with censure, the fact that one of them had effected his escape.

FRANCE.

The _fêtes_ of May 10th, were attended with great splendor and eclat; but the non-proclamation of the Empire on that occasion is the feature most remarked upon by the foreign press. The number of troops present is estimated at 80,000. The whole Champ de Mars had been prepared especially for the occasion. The President was received with loud applause. After distributing the eagles among the various regiments, he addressed them briefly, saying that the history of nations was, in a great measure, the history of armies--that on their success or reverse depends the fate of civilization and of the country; that the Roman eagle adopted by the Emperor Napoleon at the commencement of the century was the most striking signification of the regeneration and the grandeur of France; and that it should now be resumed, not as a menace against foreign powers, but as the symbol of independence, the souvenir of an heroic epoch, and as the sign of the nobleness of each regiment. After this address the standards were taken to the chapel and blessed by the Archbishop. The ceremonies were protracted and attended by an immense concourse of spectators.----General Changarnier has addressed a remarkable letter to the Minister of the Interior in reply to his demand that he should take the oath of allegiance to Louis Napoleon. He says that the President had repeatedly endeavored to seduce him to his support--that he had offered not only to make him Marshal but to confer upon him another military dignity unknown since the Empire, and to attach to it immense pecuniary rewards; that when he perceived that personal ambition had no effect upon him, he endeavored to gain him over, by pretending a design to prepare the way for the restoration of the Monarchy to which he supposed him to be attached. All these attempts had been without effect. He had never ceased to be ready to defend with energy the legal powers of Louis Napoleon, and to give every opposition to the illegal prolongation of those powers. The exile he had undergone in solitude and silence had not changed his opinion of the duties he owed to France. He would hasten to her defense should she be attacked, but he refused the oath exacted by the perjured man who had failed to corrupt him. In reply to this letter, M. Cassagnac, editor of the _Constitutionnel_, brought against General Changarnier specific charges--that in March, 1849, he demanded from Louis Napoleon written authority to throw the Constituent Assembly out of the window--that he subsequently urged him in the strongest manner to make a _coup d'etat_; and that in November, 1850, he assembled a number of political personages, and proposed to them to arrest Louis Napoleon and send him to prison, to prorogue the Assembly for six months, and to make him Dictator. It was further alleged that one of the persons present at this meeting was M. Molé, who refused to sanction the scheme and immediately disclosed it to the President. Count Molé immediately published an indignant denial of the whole story, so far as his name had been connected with it.----General Lamoriciere has, also, in a published letter, refused to take the oath required; he declares his readiness to defend France against foreign foes whenever she shall be attacked, but he will not take the oath of fidelity to a perjured chief.----The venerable astronomer, Arago, has also refused to take the oath of allegiance required of all connected in any way with the government. He wrote a firm and dignified letter to the Minister notifying him of his purpose, and calling on him to designate the day when it would be necessary for him to quit the Bureau of Longitude with which he had been so closely connected for half a century. He also informed him that he should address a circular letter to scientific men throughout the world, explaining the necessity which drove him from an establishment with which his name had been so long associated, and to vindicate his motives from suspicion. The Minister informed him that, in consideration of his eminent services to the cause of science, the government had decided not to exact the oath, and that he could therefore retain his post.----These examples of non-concurrence in the new policy of the President have been followed by inferior magistrates in various parts of France. In several of the departments members of the local councils have refused to take the oaths of allegiance, and in the towns of Havre, Thiers, and Evreux the tribunals of commerce have done likewise. The civil courts of Paris have also, in one or two instances, asserted their independence by deciding against the government in prosecutions commenced against the press. On the 23d of April, moreover, the civil tribunal gave judgment on the demand made by the Princes of the Orleans family to declare illegal the seizure by the Prefect of the Seine, of the estates of Neuilly and Monceaux, under the decree of the 22d of January, relative to the property of the late king, Louis Philippe. In answer to this demand, the Prefect of the Seine, in the name of the government, called on the tribunal to declare that the decree of 22d January was a legislative act, and the seizure of the property an administrative act, and that consequently the tribunal had no jurisdiction. The case was pleaded at great length; and the court pronounced a judgment declaring itself competent, keeping the case before it, fixing a day for discussing it on its merits, and condemning the Prefect in costs. These movements indicate a certain degree of reaction in the public mind, and have prepared the way for the favorable reception of a letter which the Bourbon pretender, the Count de Chambord, has issued to the partisans of monarchy throughout France. This letter is dated at Venice, April 27, and is designed as an official declaration of his wishes to all who wish still to remain faithful to the principles which he represents. He declares it to be the first duty of royalists to do no act, to enter into no engagement, in opposition to their political faith. They must not hesitate, therefore, to refuse all offices where promises are required from them contrary to their principles, and which would not permit them to do in all circumstances what their convictions impose upon them. Still, important and active duties are devolved upon them. They should reside as much as possible in the midst of the population on whom they can exercise influence, and should try, by rendering themselves useful to them, to acquire, each day, still greater claims to their gratitude and confidence. They ought also to aid the government in its struggles against anarchy and socialism, and to show themselves in all emergencies the most courageous defenders of social order. Even in case of an attempt to re-establish the Empire, they are exhorted to abstain from doing any thing to endanger the repose of the country, but to protest formally against any change which can endanger the destinies of France, and expose it once more to catastrophes and perils from which the legitimate monarchy alone can save it. He urges them to be unalterable on matters of principle, but at the same time calm, patient, and ever moderate and conciliating toward persons. "Let your ranks, your hearts," he says, "like mine, remain continually open to all. We are all thrown on times of trials and of sacrifices; and my friends will not forget that it is from the land of exile that I make this new appeal to their constancy and their devotedness. Happier days are yet in store for France and for us. I am certain of the fact. It is in my ardent love for my country--it is in the hope of serving it--of being able to serve it--that I gather the strength and the courage necessary for me to accomplish the great duties which have been imposed on me by Providence."----Additional importance is ascribed to this proclamation from the fact that it was made just after a visit from the Grand Dukes of Russia and Venice, and just before the arrival of the Emperor Nicholas at Vienna. The death of Prince Schwarzenberg is supposed to have led to a still closer union of interest and of policy between Austria and Russia, as the personal leanings both of the Austrian Emperor, and the new prime Minister are known to be in that direction.

Some further developments have been made of the sentiments of the three allied powers, Austria, Russia, and Prussia, concerning the re-establishment of the Empire in France. It is represented that the late Minister of Austria was in favor of encouraging such a step, but that both the other powers concurred in saying that the accomplishment of it would be a "violation of the treaties of 1814 and 1815, inasmuch as those treaties have excluded for ever the family of Bonaparte from the government of France." Now, those treaties form the basis of the whole policy of Europe; and it is the duty of the powers to demand that they shall be respected by the President of the Republic himself in all their provisions, and particularly not to permit any infraction of them as to the point in question, which has reference to him personally. Nevertheless, the sovereigns of Prussia and Russia would not perhaps be disposed to refuse to recognize Louis Napoleon Bonaparte as Emperor of the French Republic--if that title were conferred on him by a new plébiscite--as had been spoken of but they should only recognize him as an elective Emperor, and for life, with only a status analogous to that of the former kings of Poland. If the two cabinets of St. Petersburg and Berlin consented to such a recognition, it was the utmost that it was possible to do; but, most certainly, beyond that point they should never go. At the same time, the cabinets formally declare, that they would only recognize the Emperor of the French Republic on the condition of his election being the result of the mode already announced (the plébiscite). They will not admit any other manner of re-establishing in France an imperial throne, even were it but for life; the two sovereigns being firmly resolved never to accept in the person of Louis Napoleon Bonaparte, any other than the supreme elective chief of the Republic, and to oppose by all the means in their power the pretension of establishing the actual President of the French Republic as Emperor, in the sense of an hereditary transmitter or founder of a Napoleonian dynasty. They add, that Louis Napoleon Bonaparte not being the issue of a sovereign or reigning family, can not become a real sovereign, or assimilate himself to reigning houses.----The pictures belonging to the late Marshal Soult were sold at auction on the 19th. The collection consisted of 157 paintings, and among them were many of the master-pieces of the old masters. The most celebrated was Murillo's 'Conception of the Virgin,' for which the chief competitors were the Emperor of Russia, the Queen of Spain, and the Director of the Louvre. It was bought by the latter at the enormous price of 586,000 francs,--or about $117,200.

EASTERN AND SOUTHERN EUROPE.

In PRUSSIA, a communication was made on the 28th of April by the King to the Chambers, transmitting a bill to abolish the articles of the Constitution and regulate the organization of the peerage. In the First Chamber it was referred to the existing committee on the constitution of the body concerned. In the Second Chamber a committee was appointed to consider the measure. The minister desired that the matter might be quickly dispatched. In the same sitting of the 28th, the Second Chamber came to two other important votes. It rejected, by a majority of 186 to 82, the resolution of the First Chamber, and which, dividing the budget of ordinary and extraordinary expenses, decided that the first should be no longer fixed annually, but once for all, and that no future modification should take place, except by a law. It also rejected, by 225 to 57, another decision of the First Chamber, by which it had declared, in opposition to the Constitution, that it could vote the budget, article by article, like the Second Chamber.

In TUSCANY a decree of the Grand Duke has abolished the Constitution and Civic Guard, and constituted the government on the same basis as before 1848. The ministers are henceforward responsible to the Grand Duke; the Council of State is separated from that of the Ministers; the communal law of 1849 and the law on the press are to be revised.

The DANISH question has been settled in London, by conferences of the representatives of the several powers concerned. Prince Christian of Glucksberg is to succeed to the crown on the death of the present King and his brother, both of whom are childless.

In TURKEY all differences with Egypt have been adjusted. Fuad-Effendi, it is announced by the Paris _Presse_, justifying all the hopes which his mission had given birth to, has come to a complete understanding with the Egyptian government, whose good intentions and perfect fair dealing he admits. The Viceroy accepts the code with the modifications called for by the state of the country, and which the Turco-Egyptian Commissioners had already fixed in their conferences at Constantinople. On its side, the Porte accords to the Viceroy the right of applying the punishment of death during seven years, without reference to the divan.

Editor's Table.

The birth-day of a nation is not merely a figurative expression. Nations are _born_ as well as men. The very etymology of the word implies as much. Social compacts may be _declarative of their independence_, or definitive of their existence, but do not create them. In truth, all such compacts and conventions do in themselves imply a previous natural growth or organization lying necessarily still farther back, as the ground of any legitimacy they may possess. There can be no _con-vening_ unless there is something to determine, _a priori_, who shall _come together_, and how they shall come together--as _representatives_ of what _principals_--as _parts_ of what ascertained _whole_--with what powers, on what terms, and for what ends. There can no more be an artificial nation than an artificial language. Aside from other influences, all attempts of the kind must be as abortive in politics as they have ever been in philology. Nations are not manufactured, either to order or otherwise, but born--born of other nations, and nurtured in those peculiar arrangements of God's providence which are expressly adapted to such a result. The analogy between them and individuals may be traced to almost any extent. They have, in general, some one event in which there may be discovered the conceptive principle, or _principium_, of their national life. They have their embryo or formative period. They have their _birth_, or the time of their complete separation from the maternal nationality to which they were most nearly and dependently united. They have their struggling infancy--their youth--their growth--_their heroic period_--their iron age of hardship and utility--their manhood--their silver age of luxury and refinement--their golden age of art and science and literature--their acme--their decline--their decay--their final extinction, or else their dissolution into those fragmentary organisms from which spring up again the elements or seeds of future nationalities.

We need not trace our own history through each of these periods. The incipient stages have all been ours, although, in consequence of a more healthy and vigorous maternity, we have passed through them with a rapidity of which the previous annals of the world present no examples. Less than a century has elapsed since that birth, whose festive natal day is presented in the calendar of the present month, and yet we are already approaching the season of manhood. We have passed that proud period which never comes but once in a nation's life, although it may be succeeded by others far surpassing it in what may be esteemed the more substantial elements of national wealth and national prosperity. Almost every state has had its HEROIC AGE. We too have had ours, and we may justly boast of it as one equaling in interest and grandeur any similar period in the annals of Greece and Rome--as one which would not shrink from a comparison with the chivalrous youth of any of the nations of modern Europe. It is the unselfish age, or rather, the time when the self-consciousness, both individual and national, is lost in some strong and all-absorbing emotion--when a strange elevation of feeling and dignity of action are imparted to human nature, and men act from motives which seem unnatural and incredible to the more calculating and selfish temperaments of succeeding times. It is a period which seems designed by Providence, not for itself only, or the great effects of which it is the immediate cause, but for its influence upon the whole after-current of the national existence. The strong remembrance of it becomes a part of the national life; it enters into its most common and constant thinking, gives a peculiar direction to its feeling; it imparts a peculiar character to its subsequent action; it makes its whole historical being very different from what it would have been had there been no such epic commencement, no such superhuman or _heroic birth_. It furnishes a treasury of glorious reminiscences wherewith to reinvigorate from time to time the national virtue when impaired, as it ever is, by the factious, and selfish, and unheroic temper produced by subsequent days of merely economical or utilitarian prosperity.

This heroic age must pass away. It is sustained, while it lasts, by special influences which can not have place in the common life and ordinary work of humanity. Its continuance, therefore, would be inconsistent with other benefits and other improvements of a more sober or less exciting kind, but which, nevertheless, belong to the proper development of the state. The deep effects, however, still remain. It inspires the poet and the orator. It furnishes the historian with his richest page. It tinges the whole current of the national literature. In fact, there can be no such thing as a national literature, in its truest sense--there can be no national poetry, no true national art, no national music, except as more or less intimately connected with the spirit of such a period.

It was not the genius of democracy simply, as Grote and some other historians maintain, but the heroic remembrances of the Persian invasion, that roused the Grecian mind, and created the brilliant period of the Grecian civilization. The new energy that came from this period was felt in every department--of song, of eloquence, of art, and even of philosophy. Marathon and Salamis still sustained the national life when it was waning under the mere political wisdom of Pericles, the factious recklessness of Alcibiades, and the still more debasing influence of the venal demagogues of later times. When this old spirit had gone out, there was nothing in the mere forms of her free institutions that could prevent Athens from sinking down into insignificance, or from being absorbed in the growth of new and rising powers.

Rome would never have been the mistress of the world, had it not been for the heroic impetus generated in the events which marked her earliest annals. Even if we are driven to regard these as in a great measure mythical, they still, in the highest and most valid sense, belong to Roman history, and all the efforts of Niebuhr and of Arnold have failed, and ever will fail, to divest them of the rank they have heretofore maintained among the formative influences in the Roman character. They entered into the national memory. They formed for ages the richest and most suggestive part of the national thinking. They became thus more really and vitally incorporated into the national being than many events whose historical authenticity no critic has ever called in question. But we can not believe them wholly or even mainly mythical. Some of the more modern theories on this subject will have to be re-examined. With all their plausibility they are open to the objection of presenting the mightiest effects without adequate or corresponding causes. Twelve hundred years of empire, such as that of Rome, could not well have had its origin in any period marked by events less strangely grand and chivalrous than those that Livy has recorded. Brutus, and Cincinnatus, and Fabricius, must have been as real as the splendid reality which could only have grown out of so heroic an ancestry. The spirit of Numa more truly ruled, even in the later Roman empire, than did ever that of Augustus. It was yet powerful in the days of Constantine. It was still present in that desperate struggle which made it difficult, even for a Christian senate, to cast out the last vestiges of the old religion, and to banish the Goddess of Victory from the altars and temples she had so long occupied.

A similar view, drawn from the Jewish history, must commend itself to every one who has even an ordinary knowledge of the Scriptures. The glorious deliverances from Egyptian bondage, the sublime reminiscences of Sinai, the heroic, as exhibited in Moses, and Joshua, and Jephthah, and Gideon, are ever reappearing in the Hebrew prophetic and lyrical poetry. These proud recollections cheer them in the long years of the captivity. Even in the latest and most debasing periods of their history, they impart an almost superhuman energy to their struggle with Rome; and what is more than all, after having sustained the Jewish song, and the Jewish eloquence, during ages of depressing conflict, their influence is still felt in all the noblest departments of Christian art and Christian literature.

No, we may almost say it, there can not truly be a nation without something that may be called its heroic age; or if there have been such, the want of this necessary fountain of political vitality has been the very reason why they have perished from the pages of history. We, too, have had such a period in our annals, and we are all the better for it, and shall be all the better for it, as long as our political existence shall endure. Some such chapter in our history seems necessary to legitimate our claim to the appellation; and however extravagant it may seem, the assertion may, nevertheless, be hazarded, that one borrowed from the maternal nationality, or from a foreign source, or even altogether mythical, would be better than none at all. If we had not had our Pilgrim Fathers, our Mayflower band, our Plymouth Rock, our Bunker Hill, our Saratoga, our Washingtons, our Warrens, our Putnams, our Montgomerys, our heroic martyr-Congresses, voting with the executioner and the ax before their eyes, we might better have drawn upon the epic imagination for some such introduction to our political existence, than regard it as commencing merely with prosaic paper compacts, or such artificial gatherings as are presented in your unheroic, though very respectable Baltimore and Harrisburg Conventions.

Some such chivalrous commencement is, moreover, absolutely essential to that great idea of national _continuity_, so necessary for the highest ends of political organization; and yet so liable to be impaired or wholly lost in the strife of those ephemeral parties, those ever-gathering, ever-dissolving factions, which, ignoring both the future and the past, are absorbed solely in the magnified interests of the present hour. For this purpose, we want an antiquity of some kind--even though it may not be a distant one--something parted from us by events so grand, so unselfish, so unlike the common, every-day acts of the current years, as to have the appearance at least of a sacred and memory-hallowed remoteness. We need to have our store of glorious olden chronicles, over which time has thrown his robe of reverence--a reverence which no profane criticism of after days shall be allowed to call in question, no subsequent statistics be permitted to impair. We need to have our proud remembrances for all parties, for all interests, for all ages--our common fund of heroic thought, affording a constant supply for the common mind of the state, thus ever living in the national history, connecting each present not only with such a heroic commencement, but, through it, with all the past that intervenes, and in this way furnishing a historical bond of union stronger than can be found in any amount of compromises or paper constitutions.

If we would be truly a State, we must have "_the Fathers_," and the revered "olden time." It is in some such veneration for a common glorious ancestry that a political organization finds its deepest root. Instead of being absurd, it is the most rational, as well as the most conservative of all feelings in which we can indulge. The more we are under its influence, the higher do we rise in the scale of being above the mere animal state, and that individualism which is its chief characteristic. It is a "good and holy thought" thus to regard the dead as still present with us, and past generations as still having an interest in our history--still justly claiming some voice in the administration of that _inheritance_ they have transmitted to us, and in respect to which our influence over the ages to come will be in proportion to our reverential remembrance of those that have preceded. Such a feeling is the opposite of that banefully radical and disorganizing view which regards the state as a mere aggregation of individual local fragments in space, and a succession of separately-flowing drops in time--which looks upon the present majority of the present generation as representing the whole national existence, and which is, of course, not only inconsistent with any true historical life, but with any thing which is really entitled to the name of fundamental or constitutional law. It is the opposite, both in its nature and its effects, of that contemptible cant now so common in both political parties, and which is ever talking of "Young America" as some new development, unconnected with any thing that has ever gone before it. The heroic men of our revolution, they were "Young America;" the gambling managers of modern political caucuses, to whatever party they may belong, or whatever may be their age or standing, are the real and veritable "old fogies."

We can not attach too much importance to this idea of _inheritance_, so deeply grounded in the human mind. The _Sancti Patres_ are indispensable to a true historical nationality. Hence the classical name for country--_Patria a patribus_--_The Father-land_. We love it, not simply for its present enjoyments and present associations, but for its past recollections--

Land of the Pilgrims' pride,
Land where our fathers died.

Without some such thought of transmitted interest continually carrying the past into the present, and both into the future, patriotism is but the cant of the demagogue. Our country is our country, not only in space, but in time--not only territorially, but historically; and it is in this latter aspect it must ever present its most intense and vital interest. Where such an interest is excluded, or unappreciated, there is nothing elevated, nothing heroic, to which the name of patriotism can be given. There is nothing but the most momentary selfishness which can bind our affections to one spot on earth more than to any other.

Opposed to this is a species of cosmopolitanism, which sometimes claims the Scriptures as being on its side. The opinion, however, will not stand the test of fair interpretation. The Bible, it is true, enjoins love to all mankind, but not as a blind and abstract philanthropy which would pass over all the intermediate gradations that Infinite Wisdom has appointed. Love of "the fathers," love of family, love of kindred, love of "our own people"--"our own, our _native_ land"--our "own Zion," nationally, as well as ecclesiastically, are commended, not only as good in themselves, but as the foundation of all the other social virtues, as the appointed means, in fact, by which the circle of the affections is legitimately expanded, and, at the same time, with a preservation of that intensity of feeling which is never found in any inflating abstract cosmopolitan benevolence.

In no book, too, do we find more distinctly set forth that idea which we have styled the root of all true patriotism--the idea of the national continuance from generation to generation, as a living, responsible whole--as one ever-flowing stream, in which the individual parts are passing away, it is true but evermore passing to that "congregation of the fathers" which still lives in the present organic life. It is presented, too, not as any difficult or transcendental or mystical conception, but as a thought belonging everywhere to the common mind, and necessarily underlying all those dread views the Scripture so often give us of national accountability and national retribution.

Every country distinguished for great deeds has ever been proud of its ancestors; has ever gloried in the facts of its early history; has ever connected them with whatever was glorious in its later annals has ever made them the boast of its eloquence, the themes of its poetry, and the subjects of festal rejoicings. In the preservation of such feelings and such ideas, our annual Fourth of July celebrations instead of being useless, and worse than useless periods of noisy declamation, as some would contend, are, in fact, doing more to preserve our union than the strongest legislative acts. This may hold when every other cable in the vessel has parted. The bare thought that our glorious old Fourth of July could never more be celebrated in its true spirit (and it would be equally gone for each and every sundered fragment) is enough to check the wildest faction, and to stay the hand of the most reckless disunionist.

It was in view of such an effect, that one of our wisest statesmen, one the farthest removed from the demagogue, and himself a participator in our heroic struggle, is represented as so enthusiastically commending this annual festival to the perpetual observation of posterity, "Through the thick gloom of the present," he exclaims, "I see the brightness of the future as the sun in heaven. We shall make this _a glorious, an immortal day_. When we are in our graves our children will honor it. They will celebrate it with thanksgiving, with festivity, with bonfires, and illuminations. On its annual return, they will shed tears, copious, gushing tears of exultation of gratitude, and of joy." "And so that day _shall_ be honored," continues his eloquent eulogist--"And so that day shall be honored, illustrious prophet and patriot! so that day shall be honored, and as often as it returns thy renown shall come along with it, and the glory of thy life, like the day of thy death, shall not fail from the remembrance of men!"

The highest reason, then, as well as the purest feeling, bid us not be ashamed of glorying in our forefathers. Scripture is in unison here with patriotism in commending the sacred sentiment. There is a religious element in the true love of race and country. "The God of our Fathers" becomes a prime article of the national as well as of the ecclesiastical creed, and without the feeling inspired by it, nationality may turn out to be a mere figment, which all political bandages will fail to sustain against the disorganizing influence of factious or sectional interests. It is not absurd, too, to cherish the belief that our ancestors were better men than ourselves, if we ourselves are truly made better by thus believing.

As we have remarked before, there may be mythical exaggeration attending such tradition, but if so, this very exaggeration must have had its ground in something really transcending what takes place in the ordinary course of a nation's life. Some late German scholars have been hunting out depreciating charges against the hero of Marathon, and, for this purpose, have subjected his very ashes to the most searching critical analysis. Truth, it may be said, is always sacred. We would not wish to undervalue the importance of the sentiment. But Miltiades the patriot is the real element that exerted so heroic an effect upon the subsequent Grecian history. Miltiades charged with political offenses lives only as the subject of antiquarian research, or a humiliating example of the common depravity appearing among the most lauded of mankind. And so, in our own case, what political utility can there be in discovering, even if it were so, that Washington was not so wise, or Warren so brave, or Putnam so adventurous, or Bunker Hill so heroically contested, as has been believed? Away with such skepticism, we say, and the mousing criticism by which it is sometimes attempted to be supported. Such beliefs have at all events become real for us by entering into the very soul of our history, and forming the staple of our national thought. To take them away would now be a baneful disorganizing of the national mind. Their influence has been felt in every subsequent event. Saratoga and Monmouth have reappeared in Chippewa, and New Orleans, and Buena Vista. May it not be hoped, too, that something of the men who convened in Philadelphia on the 4th of July, 1776, or of that earlier band on whom Burke pronounced his splendid eulogy, may still live, even in the worst and poorest of our modern Congresses!

Again, this reverence for "the fathers" is the most healthfully conservative of all influences, because it presents the common sacred ground on which all political parties, all sectional divisions, and all religious denominations can heartily unite. Every such difference ought to give way, and, in general, does give way, in the presence of the healing spirit that comes to us from the remembrance of those old heroic times. The right thinking Episcopalian not only acquiesces, but rejoices cordially in the praises of the Pilgrim Fathers. He can glory even in their stern puritanism, without losing a particle of reverence or respect for his own cherished views. The Presbyterian glows with pride at the mention of the cavaliers of Virginia, and sees in their ancient loyalty the strength and consistency of their modern republicanism. The most rigid Churchman of either school--whether of Canterbury or Geneva--finds his soul refreshed by the thought of that more than martial heroism which distinguished the followers of Penn and the first colonists of Pennsylvania.

Our rapid editorial view has been suggested by the great festal period of the current month; but we can not close it without the expression of one thought which we deem of the highest importance. If the influences coming from this heroic age of our history are so very precious, we should be careful not to diminish their true conservative power, by associating them with every wretched imitation for which there may be claimed the same or a similar name. The memory of our revolution (to which we could show, if time permitted, there should be given a truer and a nobler epithet) is greatly lowered by being compared continually with every miserable Cuban expedition and Canadian invasion, or every European _émeute_, without any reference to the grounds on which they are attempted, or the characters and motives of those by whom they are commenced. We may indeed sympathize with every true effort to burst the hard bonds of irresponsible power; but we should carefully see to it that our own sacred deposit of glorious national reminiscences lose not all its reverence by being brought out for too common uses, or profaned by too frequent comparison with that which is really far below it, if not altogether of a different kind. When Washington and Greene and Franklin are thus placed side by side with Lopez, and Ledru-Rollin, and Louis Blanc, or a profane parallel is run between the Pilgrim colonists and modern Socialists and St. Simonians, there is only an inevitable degradation on the one side without any true corresponding elevation on the other. They are the enemies of our revolution, and of its true spirit, who are thus for making it subservient to all purposes that may be supposed to bear the least resemblance. Our fathers' struggle, be it ever remembered, was not for the subversion but the conservation of constitutional law, and, therefore, even its most turbulent and seemingly lawless acts acquire a dignity placing them above all vulgar reference, and all vulgar imitation. He is neither a patriot nor a philanthropist who would compare the destruction of the tea in the harbor of Boston with every abolition riot, or every resistance to our own solemnly enacted laws, or every lynching mob that chooses to caricature the forms of justice, or every French _émeute_, or revolutionary movement with its mock heroics--its burlesque travestie of institutions it can not comprehend, and of a liberty for which it so soon shows itself utterly unqualified. It is our mission to redeem and elevate mankind, by showing that the spirit of our heroic times lives constantly in the political institutions to which they gave birth, and that republican forms are perfectly consistent, not only with personal liberty, but with all those higher ideas that are connected with the conservation of law, of reverence, of loyalty, of rational submission to right authority--in a word, of true _self-government_, as the positive antithesis to that animal and counterfeit thing--the _government of self_. It is not the conservative who is staying the true progress of mankind. A licentious press, a corrupt and gambling spirit of faction in our political parties, and, above all, frequent exhibitions of vulgar demagoguism in our legislative bodies, may do more to strengthen and perpetuate the European monarchies, than all the ignorance of their subjects, and all the power of their armies.

Editor's Easy Chair.