yeomen are the salt of the earth-and yet you don't know how to bargain for your leases!"" THE DEMAGOGUE THE COURTIER'S COUNTERPART "Although there was a good deal of the English footmann in John's logic and feeling, there was also a good deal of truth in what he said. The part where he accused Newcome of holding one set of opinions in private, concerning his masters, and another in public, is true to the life. There is not, at this moment, within the wide reach of the American borders, one demagogue to be found who might not, with justice, be accused of precisely the same deception. There is not one demagogue in the whole country, who, if he lived in a monarchy, would not be the humblest advocate of men in power, ready to kneel at the feet of those who stood in the sovereign's presence." "True to the life" indeed! It is old Aristotle over again. The Stagyrite has a passage worth referring to in this connection: **** "Another form of Democracy is where all citizens are eligible to office, as in the former instance, but the multitude is supreme, instead of the law; and this is the case when the people's resolutions (τὰ ψηφίσματα) are valid, but the law is not. This is brought about by demagogues; for in republics administered according to law, a demagogue finds no place, since the best citizens have the preeminence; but demagogues spring up where the laws are not valid. For there the people becomes a monarch-one tyrant composed of many. Such a people, then, being virtually a king, seeks to play the king, as it is not controlled by law, and becomes depotic, so that flatterers are in repute; and this form among popular governments is analogous to tyranny among monarchies. Wherefore, also, their disposition is the same, and both are wont to tyrannize over the better class, and the resolutions of the one answer to the ukases (τὰ ἐπιτάγματα) of the other, and the demagogue and courtier are equivalent, and each other's counterpart."-POLITICS, Book 4, Chap. 4. ONE LAW FOR THE RICH AND ANOTHER FOR THE POOR. "There is a landlord in this State, a man of large means, who became liable for the debts of another to a considerable amount. At the very moment when his rents could not be collected, owing to your interference and the remissness of those in authority to enforce the laws, the sheriff entered his honse, and sold its contents, in order to satisfy an execution against him! There is American aristocracy for you, and I am sorry to add American justice, as justice has got to be administered among us." A POPULAR SYLLOGISM. "Let the people but truly rule, have no temptation to do wrong. (From an Anti-Rent Lecture.) themselves, for they are the state Is a man likely to hurt himself? Equality is my axiom." SLUMBERING OVER A VOLCANO. "Look at the newspapers that will be put into your hands tomorrow morning, fresh from Wall and Pine and Ann streets. They will be in convulsions, if some unfortunate wight of a Senator speak of adding an extra corporal to a regiment of foot, as an alarming war-demonstration, or quote the fall of a fancy stock that has not one cent of intrinsic value, as if it betokened the downfall of a nation; while they doze over this volcano, which is raging and gathering strength beneath the whole community, menacing destruction to the nation itself, which is the father of stocks." MR. COOPER'S OPINION OF THAT ATROCIUS PRIVILEGIUM CALLED, WITH EXQUISITE IRONY, "AN ACT TO EQUALIZE TAXATION.” "We deem the first of these measures far more tyrannical than the attempt of Great Britain to tax her colonies, which brought about the Revolution. It is of the same general character-that or unjust taxation; while it is attended by circumstances of aggravation that were altogether wanting in the policy of the mother country. This is not a tax for revenue, which is not needed; but a tax to 'choke off the landlords, to use a common American phrase. It is clearly taxing nothing, or it is taxing the same property twice. It is done to conciliate three or four thousand voters, who are now in the market, at the expense of three or four hundred who, it is known, are not to be bought. It is unjust in its motives, its means and its end. The measure is discreditable to civilization, and an outrage on liberty." A NUT FOR THE ADVOCATES OF CONCESSION. "That profound principle of legislation, which concedes the right in order to maintain quiet, is admirably adapted to forming sinners; and, if carried out in favor of all who may happen to covet their neighbors' goods, would, in a short time render this community the very paradise of knaves." A MAKE-BELIEVE GOVERNMENT WORSE THAN NONE. "Manytongues took charge of the watch, though he laughed at the probability of there being any farther disturbance that night. "As for the red-skins,' he said, 'they would as soon sleep out under the trees, at this season of the year, as sleep under a roof; and as for waking-cats a'nt their equals. No-no-Colonel; leave it all to me, and I'il carry you through the night as quietly as if we were on the prer-ies, and living under good wholesome prer-ie law.' "As quietly as if we were on the prairies!' We had then reached that pass in New-York, that after one burning, a citizen might really hope to pass the remainder of his night as quietly as if he were on the prairies! And there was that frothy, lumbering, useless machine, called a government, at Albany, within fifty miles of us, as placid, as self-satisfied, as much convinced that this was the greatest people on earth, and itself their illustrious representatives, as if the disturbed counties were so many gardens of Eden, before sin and transgression had become known to it! If it was doing anything in the premises, it was probably calculating the minimum the tenant should pay for the landlord's land, when the latter might be sufficiently worried to part with his estate. Perhaps it was illustrating its notions of liberty, by naming the precise sum that one citizen ought to accept, in order that the covetous longings of another should be satisfied!'" WHAT IT'S COMING TO. "I agree with you, Hugh,' said my uncle, in reply to a remark of my own; 'there is little use in making ourselves unhappy about evils that we cannot help. If we are to be burnt up and stripped of our property, we shall be burnt up and stripped of our property. I have a competency secured in Europe, and we can all live on that, with economy, should the worst come to the worst.' "It is as strange thing, to hear an American talk of seeking a refuge of any sort in the old world!' "If matters proceed in the lively manner they have for the last ten years, you'll hear of it often. Hitherto, the rich of Europe have been in then habit of laying by a penny in America against an evil day; but the time will soon come, unless there is a great change, when the rich of America will return the compliment in kind. We are worse off than if we were in a state of nature, in many respects; having our hands tied by the responsibility that belongs to our position and means, while those who choose to assail us are under a mere nominal restraint."" Cooper's Receipt for Anti-Rentism is, in substance. simply to disfranchise those counties which resist the operation of law. When will our rul-our servants, we mean, be men enough to use so efficacious a remedy? But our limits compel us to take leave for the present of this most valuable book. We say for the present, for its themes are too momentous to be disposed of so briefly. But one thing we must say in conclusion. The parts of this work which might seem, to the inexperienced reader, the wildest, such as the hints at emigration, suggestions of repelling force by torce, &c., do not originale with Mr. Cooper. The same thoughts have found a lodgment in many a breast already, though they have never till now found so open an utterance. More than one party of Americans in Europe (albeit it might consist of more than a bachelor uncle and his nephew) has held such a conversation as Hugh and Roger held in Paris. More than one American has given his friends as grim a welcome home as Jack Dunning did the Littlepages. And finally (for there is room for a few more lines) if any one should blame us for omitting the lesser duties of criticism-for having failed to observe that Mr. Cooper's style is at times incurably wooden, and his sentences frequently read the very opposite of what they mean, and his mottoes occasionally have not the least earthly connection with the subjects of the chapters to which they are refixed-we have noticed these blemishes and others, as who has not in every novel that Mr. Cooper ever wrote. But at present we are in no frame of nind to carp at the spots on the face of the sun. If all our authors would write as truthfully as the author of "Indian and Ingin" we should be content to have them all write as clumsily. TRANSLATORS OF HOMER.* "BELIER, mon ami, commencez par le commencement." As we are going to write about translations of Homer let us first get a clear idea of what translation, and more particularly poetical translation, is. Some of the popular nations on the subject are indirectly expressed in the following passage, from the writings of an eminent logician : "A good translation of a poem (though perhaps, strictly speaking, what is so called is rather an imitation) ["and accordingly," adds the author, in a note, "it should be observed that, as all admit, none but a poet can be qualified to translate a poem"] is read, by one well *Homer's Illiad. Translated by Munford. Boston: Little & Brown. 1846. acquainted with the original with equal or even superior pleasure to that which it affords one ignorant of that original, whereas the best translation of a prose work (at least of one not principally valued for beauty of style) will seldom be read by one familiar with the original." Whateley's Rhetoric, p. 334. Under the head "Fallacies" in the Archbishop's Logic is mentioned, (p. 207,) that of indirect assumption; of which there are two or three palpable instances in the above extract. First of all we do most positively deny, from our own experience, that "the best translation of a prose work will seldom be read by one familiar with the original." We have known men who read with pleasure Hobbes' Thucydides and the Oxford Tacitus, though fairly acquainted with the originals. To be sure a great deal lies in the parenthesis "at least of one not principally valued for beauty of style." A work is usually read either for its style or its matter; and he who reads it for matter alone will usually prefer consulting the original as the safest course, the best translators blundering occasionally. Some, who are intensely fond of original poetry, cannot abide any poetical translations at all; but it would hardly answer to generalize from their case. But this by the way. Our main quarrel is with the assertions that none but a poet can translate poetry, and that good poetical translation is imitation. The first of these many receive as an axiom. Qualify it, and say that a poet's translation must be superior to that of any other man, and a still greater number will acquiesce in it. Yet we are slow to admit it even in this qualified form. There are, it is true, some strong plausibilities against us. We naturally admit, it may be said, that to translate a prose work well one must write good prose; why should not the same rule hold good in the case of poetry? Then the facts of the case are against us. Great poets are usually great translators. There is Pope, and Byron, and Shelley, and Coleridge, &c. But let us see how these positions will bear examination. In what sense is a good translator of prose a good prose-writer? Must a man be a great historian to translate Thucydides well? Or a great novelist to translate. Balzac well? Hardly. When we say that our translator is a good prose-writer we mean that he has a good prose |