us by the Constitution which our fathers purchased with their blood, transmitted to their children as their patrimony, and in the subversion of which, the Union, dear and venerated as it is, and beautiful as is its structure, must be shattered into a thousand fragments, disappointing the proudest hopes of our race; at the very moment when England, not so much moved by our bright example, as by the rankling of her ancient revenge, her deep grudges, and her grumbling and but half-smothered jealousy of our rising fortunes, is sending over her emissaries, who, in the name of philanthropy and the name of liberty, join the enemies of our peace, and proclaim along with them, a violent, general and protracted crusade against our rights; at the very moment when an independent spirit dictates to our fellow-citizens the duty, as they have the power, of taking the guardianship of their own rights into their own keeping; in an age beaming with the light of genius, vigorous with the power of thought and the maturity of intellect, and embellished with all that art and a refined taste can furnish of the charming and attractive; in a section of the American Republic, surpassed by no other in the high-souled love of freedom of its sons, where chivalry adds to duty an unequalled grace, and a dereliction of principle draws down a reproach that withers, blights and kills; in a section, that has already vindicated its claim to learning and scholarship, political knowledge and rare statesmanship, on many occasions and at different times; at a period so interesting, in a region so rich with resources, and with so many inducements to literary effort, it is a misfortune, if it be not a fault, that the South has no fit vehicle or organ, like the other wide-spread sections of the Union, through which to express its views on leading questions and interests, in such a tone of truth and power, as to be distinctly heard by the whole world. The South ought to have such an organ, a work suited to the wants of the age, and competent to enforce with ability, zeal and eloquence the great duties of the age, one that shall vindicate truth and maintain right with a temperate, but a firm and determined spirit, one that shall nourish, and call into active exercise, the literary pride of our Southern commonwealths, uttering opinions with power, but not regardless of the graces of style, nor of the expectations of learned and critical readers, a work which

New England, who has hitherto aspired to monopolize all literary honors, shall be proud to recognize, and at which old England, with the laurels of centuries on her brow, will be ashamed to sneer. The South ought to have such a work. Her sectional pride, if she would not fall far behind other sections of the Union, demands it; but more than this, she owes a duty not only to herself, but to the whole country, to arts, to letters, to education, to the present age, to move in this matter, and to move in it effectually. She has ample means, in a pecuniary point of view, to sustain such an enterprize, and she has learning and literary ability of a high and varied order at her command, to shed lustre on its progress, to achieve for it complete success, and to crown it with an undying glory.

The South ought to have such a Periodical, not simply on account of the South, but for the sake of America,youthful, but proud America, for the sake of her laws, her institutions and her literature. We, of the South, are an intelligent people. No one doubts it; all, indeed, admit it, for it cannot be denied by any one, and although intelligence is rather a plebeian attribute, yet, as characteristic of a whole people, it is something, it is much. We would rather be an intelligent people, than a vain, frivolous, conceited, stupid community of plodders or castle-builders. We are intelligent, because God has endowed us with rational faculties, and because our governments supply all classes, the poor as well as the rich, the humble as well as the exalted, with the means of obtaining a plain, substantial education; because they guarantee to all citizens, a distinct, social and political position, and afford ample means for the development of their faculties, in some direction or other, that is agreeable to their taste or their circumstances; because honors and distinctions, among us, are the appendage of talent, information, enterprize and moral worth,-rewards obtained by the citizen, because he deserves them, and are not, as in the older countries of Europe, a mere hereditary possession, for which the incumbent, however ostentatious in his place, can set up no title, but the very equivocal one of luck or accident; we are intelligent, because wealth is more equally distributed among the citizens of free commonwealths, than among the subjects of monarchies; because individuals placed, to a certain extent, in a position of dependence, VOL. I.-NO. 1.

6

are thrown more upon their own resources, than those whose fortunes are ready furnished to their hands; because the very labor of inventing expedients, and of working out, each man for himself, the problem of his own destiny, sharpens his faculties, strengthens his mind, renders him thoughtful, inquisitive, astute, and ready for any and all emergencies; we are intelligent, because in a country abounding with schools, colleges, universities, newspapers, magazines and libraries, where the people go to church every Sunday, and listen to the instructions of learned, able, earnest and eloquent divines, and, every other evening of the week perhaps, to the lyceum or the lecture room of some literary or mechanic association, where the principles of art and science are thoroughly discussed by those who understand them, it would be a crying shame, if we were not pretty well informed, as to most matters that concern us as men and as citizens, if we had not obtained, from such a variety of sources, some clear insight into the past history of men and measures, and into the nature and bearing of the circumstances by which we are surrounded, if we were ignorant, as moral agents, with the light of Christianity beaming upon our path, of the great duties which we owe to God, and of the almost equal obligations imposed upon us by the country that sustains and protects us. are an intelligent people, acquainted with our rights, and with the power we are able to wield for great and important ends. By our intelligence we have maintained nobly the free position which our ancestors reached and occupied before us; and the same causes which have made us an intelligent and free, have made us, at the same time, a bold, practical, enterprising, independent and strong people,proud, it may be, to some extent, of our resources, but not too proud, when it is considered, that our reputation is at stake, and that we have to maintain the ground we occupy, with dignity, with firmness, and without wavering, for a moment, from the mark.

We

God and our country have made us, the citizens of the South, an intelligent people, a shrewd, keen, sharp-witted, far-reaching people. Our nature as men, our condition as freemen, the circumstances by which we are surrounded, and over which we have no control, have made us, from the very necessity of the case, an intelligent people, with

eyes open to see every thing, with ears open to hear every thing that most concerns us, and with tongues to speak out our thoughts freely, and to defend whatever needs to be defended. It is our fate, our destiny; it is the decree of heaven, from which we cannot escape, and which we cannot alter, even if we would. Shall we take to ourselves credit on this account, because we have obeyed a decree which we could not resist? Are the citizens of the South to be praised because they are not barbarians, are not idolaters, are not the subjects of despotic rule, are not ignorant of many things which they could not help knowing? The Greeks were an intelligent people, but they were more, far more; they attained to a loftier position than that of mere intelligence, a position from which they looked down, and from which they might well look down, with a kindling eye, on all the surrounding nations of the earth, and upon all the succeeding generations of men every where, and, occupying this eminence, might proudly, but vainly challenge all the nations and kingdoms and republics of the earth, however enlightened and however aspiring, to compete with them, and to bear away the laurels from that land of eloquence, song and philosophy, whose vallies and mountains their taste and genius have surrounded with an everlasting halo of light and beauty. The Greeks were a classical, a refined, an eminently literary people. They were the creators of literature, and they imparted to it, at the period of its creation, such elements of grace, excellence

and majesty, that men may look upon it even now, as God

did upon the face of the world when he had finished it, and pronounce it, good, very good. It came from their hands in all the symmetry of the most beautiful and noble proportions, with attributes almost divine, beaming from its brow, and charming all minds with its unutterable loveliness. The Romans were an intelligent people; by their intelligence and adroitness they conquered the world, and by their intelligence they ruled it, and kept possession of it for centuries; but their ambition, misdirected at first, afterwards soared higher, far higher, than to the mere acquisition of territory; they too, like the Greeks, sought earnestly for the priceless 'jewels of the mind', as an inheritance for themselves and their children's children; they, too, were ambitious of literary fame and eminence. If their literature

is less original in its features than that of the Greeks, it is because the latter had occupied the whole ground before them. What they could do, in such circumstances, they did do; their scholars went up to the great and refreshing fountain, where all scholars go to slake their thirst, and they appropriated to themselves the learning, the arts, the philosophy, the literature of their more classical and polished neighbors, and added to it a literature of their own, a vigorous, healthy, ornate, and magnificent, Roman literature. The English, the Germans, the French, are, each of them, an intelligent people; they know their rights, and they know how to maintain them. But does their fame rest simply on their intelligence, or even upon their wealth, the extent of their authority, or their military prowess? Have the people, where Locke and Newton and Bacon and Milton were born, no other claim to superiority, than these mere accidents, so to speak, in their history? Does the Frenchman, when he reads the pages of Racine, Moliere, Montesquieu, Fenelon, and of a hundred other authors equally celebrated, think that the immortal renown of his beautiful and chivalrous country, rests only on a knowledge of those common arts, which are essential to the existence of the social fabric every where, and with which the ignorant rustic is as familiar as the highest peer in the realm? Does he who comes from the country of Goëthe and Schiller and the Schlegels, think so of that land of scholars, philosophers and divine artists that gave him birth? No! it is the literature of these several people, which causes all nations to turn their eyes towards them with admiration; it is their literature, which has impressed its footsteps on the age in which we live, and rendered it noble and imposing; it is their literature, which will send down their names with glory to all coming times; it is the empire they maintain, and have so long maintained, over the minds of thinking men throughout the world, by means of that noiseless, but powerful class of operatives, whose work is done in secret, their scholars, poets, artists, philosophers, mathematicians and men of genius, of whom they boast, and of whom they may well boast! It is by such men that nations are rendered great and illustrious, and not by mere plodders, not by those who think only about common and indifferent matters, such as how they are to obtain a livelihood or a fortune, simply