tion to blunt the sense of honor! Instead of feeling 'a stain like a 'wound,' a man is likely to come out of such conflicts, scared and scaled all over as with the mail of Leviathan. I confess that I look with more respect upon the gentle courtesy of the old chivalry, upon the mad sense of honor defended in the tournament, upon the bloody battling of natural pride and jealousy, than upon the abusive and outrageous language of our party strifes. All this too in a time of peace! All this for difference of opinion on grave and difficult questions, upon which men may lawfully and honestly differ! Opponents for such cause treating one another like ruffians! Reputation, the life-the more than life-of a man, stabbed and slain in the shambles of this political butchery! Tell us not, men of the world! of our religious disputes! Talk not of our odium theologicum. Say nothing of the contentions of professional men, or of the quarrels of authors. Their sound is scarcely heard now, nor is it likely any more to be audible in this land; for it is all lost in the loud strife and fierce battle of politics that is every year and every month rising and raging around us.' -pp. 273-278.

These views are eminently just and wise, worthy of the attention of civilized nations, and of our own country in particular. The perusal of them at the present time, both by citizens and legislators, would tend greatly to restrain that violence and dishonesty which are the disgrace of political proceedings both in the Forum and out of it. One most influential means of spreading the rancor of party is the press, and preeminently the periodical press; and since all parties, and eminent men of all parties, are constantly made the victims of unprincipled calumny, and as Mr. Dewey terms it, of political butchery, it is to the interest of all parties, and of all men in public life, to enforce in every direction the necessity of a thorough moral reform in the language of social controversy. If the editors of the periodical press have not conscience enough, have not reverence enough for truth, have not respect enough for themselves, to curb their licentious pens, and abjure the vocabulary of Billingsgate, then let the readers of their own party, effectually intimate to them, in a way that cannot be misunderstood, how deeply public morals are injured, the laws of civilized intercourse outraged, and above all, the interests of truth and religion sacrificed by that hateful and baneful kind of writing, whose only varieties from column to column lie between vulgar bullying and eloquent blackguardism. We heartily thank Mr. Dewey for the manly and rational stand he has made against these unprincipled and pestilent violations of truth, decency, and morality.

The following passage is worthy of becoming a standing motto for all political and literary journalists, and of being committed to memory by every member of the imperial parliament.

'Personal independence beaten down; mutual confidence and respect prostrated; moral deterioration follows as a natural consequence. I do not forget to limit the observation. I know that political action is not the whole action of the country. I do not say that the national character is sunk to the point of its political derelictions; by no means: but this I say, that in morality, in politics, so far as it can take effect, tends to debase and brutalize the country; it tends to corrupt the public sentiment, and to degrade private virtue. No man is so pure, but he is vilified without mercy by the opposite party; no man is so base, so vicious, so criminal, but he is sustained without conscience by his own. It tends to divest the franchise of all dignity, and the government of all venerableness. Let politics be separated from principle, from a high and commanding morality, and, instead of a free people at the polls, we shall have the brawls of a vulgar election; and instead of a magnanimous and self-poised government, we shall have a miserable, time-serving, place-keeping function. It is but for every writer and speaker in the country to charge himself to speak and write with fairness, candor, and courtesy; for every citizen to vote honestly; for every legislator and ruler to act as one who has sworn at the altar of truth, in the sight of heaven. Oh, come, holy truth, easier than falsehood! primeval virtue, better than victory! and that which the sages of the world, the prophets of human hope, looking over the ages, have sighed to behold-shall appear-a free and happy community-a free, lofty, and self-governed people !'—p. 279.

It is not at all unlikely, if this volume should fall into the hands of some of our literary craftsmen, that they will endeavour to make sport with it, and probably set it as the Philistines did Sampson, between the columns of their idol's temple, that they may mock him. But let them take heed. It will be easy, perfectly so, to malign it, because it is American; and just as easy to hate it, because it pleads for honor and morality. It will suit the interests of those who live by outrage and falsehood to decry and condemn what they cannot gainsay. Who ever knew a thief that liked a halter, or a guilty culprit that did not hate the law? We should rejoice to be able for once to exercise a little arbitrary power, and shut up every political scribe from the mighty thunderer of Printing-house square, to the little dirty squibber of the Ten Towns Messenger, in their back parlours, or suburban villas, or smoky garrets, till they had read carefully through the whole of these admirable discourses; and if many of them, when the task was over, did not come forth with a blush of crimson upon their cheeks, the world would have a just right to say it was because they had long since sold their conscience for filthy lucre, or because they had the hearts of tigers and not of men, or because the only one they ever had was turned to cinder by their inveterate habit of forging within it nothing but thunderbolts.

We have not space to quote from those parts of the work

which relate to commerce and social intercourse, war, education, and liberty. There is, however, much in the author's discourses upon all these subjects, that is worthy of public attention, and which can scarcely be read by any man, or christians of any party, without advantage. To the men of business, who are not men of a political bias, the work will prove as instructive and useful as to any. There is a tone of manly dignity, of calmness, and discrimination, preserved throughout all the discussions. There are a few expressions, and but a few, that would induce us to suspect that the author is not of our own views in theology. But while this difference is scarcely discernible in his pages, the suspicion of it has made us the more anxious to read candidly, to judge impartially, and to commend warmly and honestly. We have found much to approve, much that at the present moment deserves to be read extensively, and little that requires stricture.

There is one point, however, on which we differ from the author. We question much whether his work would not altogether have been more successful and acceptable if it had not assumed the form of pulpit discourses. We are not convinced by what he has said of the propriety of preaching whole sermons, and especially a course of sermons, on these topics, though they are confessedly important and connected with the morals of christianity. We will not, however, press this allegation against him, when we remember how much pleasure we have derived from his labors, and reflect that, not improbably, this was the best use he could make both of his talents and his pulpit, as he himself seems to think. We are content; and heartily wish his work as extensive a circulation as himself can expect, or his English publishers in his stead.

Art. III. A Diary in America, with Remarks on its Institutions. Part Second. By CAPTAIN MARRYAT, C.B. In 3 vols. London: Longman. 1839.

THE

HE new world appears to be affording ample matter for speculation to the inhabitants of the old; and like the camelion in the fable, is represented as blue, green, black, or white, according to the point of view in which its visitors behold it. It is the stage on which a great drama is performing; the result of which will be an example, or a beacon to the whole civilized world. Many are the opinions, and of course the contradictions, which have been put forth concerning it, to no one of which can implicit faith be given, because at present they are and must be,

matters of conjecture. The problem is yet to be solved; not as in mathematics, where the use of given and unalterable quantities must produce a certain result; but as one which is open to the influence of new and collateral agents, some of which may yet have to appear, while the full influence of others already in existence, can scarcely be appreciated or foreseen. To each succeeding traveller, events appear to have that tendency, which his previous opinions would lead him to infer; and the extent of his wishes is often the boundary of his opinions. Every thing is seen in his favorite light; and as soon as his prepossessions are discovered, it is not difficult for an ingenious and somewhat malicious people, to lead him widely astray, while they persuade him that his path is direct and plain. If we receive as truth one half of the information which our successive authors communicate, we may probably be near the mark; the misfortune is, that, as Dr. Johnson remarked on a somewhat similar occasion, we do not 'know which half' to take. One principal defect in the ratiocination of many of our writers on America is this, that they leave entirely out of their calculations, the probable effects of the great moral and religious causes which are evidently at work, and which must exert an ever increasing influence on the destinies of our brethren of the West.

Of these the author before us appears to understand nothing, and therefore wisely says but little; and even that little had been as well unsaid. Of strong Church and Tory prejudices, he admits more candidly than prudently, the object of his work; and that every individual anecdote and observation was written with a certain motive: which admission, however, would probably never have been made but for the strictures of the Edinburgh Review.

The work, in fact, is constructed on the most approved model of the elephant trap: commencing with apparently sufficient latitude, and ornamented with anecdotes and observations with nothing of a startling nature in them, yet with a latent bearing, and placed there with the (afterwards) avowed purpose of alluring those whom graver demonstrations might alarm; and we are half led half coaxed by our guide, through a succession of discussions, all narrowing and closing in to his purpose by degrees, till we are landed safely, as he thinks, in a perfect Tory trap; where our conductor unwinds his trunk from our necks, turns round upon us, and salaams, with 'pretty considerable' coolness and self-complacency.

6

This is scarcely fair; but the object is thus stated. Those 'who would not look at a more serious work will read this; and 'the opinions it contains will be widely disseminated and im'pressed, without the reader's being aware of it;' that it may be read, not merely by the highly educated portion of the commu

nity, for they are able to judge for themselves, but by every 'tradesman and mechanic, pored over by milliners' girls and boys ⚫ behind the counter, and thumbed to pieces in every petty circulating library' (the italics in the two first sentences are ours). Vol. iii. pp. 292, 293.

Those who cannot judge for themselves are certainly the most likely to be proselyted by the work; but what adequate end can be answered by trepanning boys from the counter, or milliners' girls, we do not exactly see. In America, where, according to the author, the majority are all-powerful, it might do something; but in these kingdoms, where matters are differently conducted, the conversion of the whole sisterhood of milliners would probably end in some such harmless demonstration, as the construction of Winchelsea tuckers, or Roden bonnets.

We, too, as well as Captain M., have heard the work denounced as light,' filled with mere anecdotes, &c.; there is enough of graver matter, however, in these last volumes; nor do we quite agree with these denunciations. In our opinion, nothing can be called light (in the sense of frivolous) that illustrates habits, manners, or modes of thinking; and we fear the lightness is often less in the subject matter than in the mind of the reader himself: which has not strength enough to elicit a truth when it is not opened and laid before him; nor judgment enough to appreciate a moral, unless it is presented in a regular didactic form, and superscribed 'important.'

Two objects appear to be aimed at throughout the work-' to 'do serious injury to the cause of democracy,' and to assist the 'cause of conservatism.'* With the first we do not quarrel, for we are no democrats; to the second we decidedly demur, for we are no Tories. To any attempt to injure the cause of democracy we might have been indifferent, had it been fairly made; but when, in addition to what we conceive to be unfairness on the one hand, an attempt is made on the other, to throw the demerits of democracy as merits into the scale of Toryism, we must oppose our protest, at least until it can be proved, that the one is good because the other is bad, or, which amounts to much the same thing, that the opposite of wrong is right.

By way of injuring the cause of democracy, the author asserts first, that the Americans are the least moral of all nations; and, secondly, that their want of morality is to be attributed to the nature of their institutions.

'I consider that at this present time the standard of morality is lower in America than in any other portion of the civilized globe. I

* Vol. ii. p. 256, and vol. iii. p. 293.

VOL. VII.

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