of the Review, when we may have more space than we can spare in this, when we shall have had time to possess ourselves more fully of all the facts in the case, by a further examination of interesting documents, and when we shall have given to the subject all that deliberation which so grave a matter demands, we may, perhaps, undertake to speak at length on these topics, and to place the responsibility of this war just where it belongs.

We may say in advance, however, that we believe this war might and should have been avoided: that it would have been avoided if Mr. Clay had been President of the United States instead of Mr. Polk, without any sacrifice of national interests or national honor, whether annexation had taken place or not; and that it is emphatically an Executive war, and brought about, however just and necessary as against Mexico, by a series of the most flagrant and alarming Executive usurpations on the Constitution of the country. These things we may attempt to show hereafter; when we may take occasion also to speak of the objects to be attained in the prosecution of the war, since we are in it, and the manner in which it should be prosecuted. We protest beforehand against every idea of carrying this war into Mexico, if that were ever so easy, with any view to the making of permanent conquests. When our brave soldiers must fight, we shall pray that they may win victories always, and everywhere-but we want no conquests no new acquisitions of territory acquired by arms, and least of all in that quarter.

We are not of the number of those who indulge in anxieties lest their patriotism and love of country, in a case like this, should be suspected. Nevertheless, we deem it right to say, that when our country is at war, her enemy is our enemy, whatever we may think about the origin or causes of the rupture. When a war exists between us and another people, it is enough to know that our own country is one party to it; and there can be but one other, and that is the enemy. As between the two, it would seem as if no citizen who knows what the duty of allegiance means, or is capable of feeling the sacred sentiment of patriotism, could hesitate about his proper position. It would be difficult to find a spot to rest upon anywhere between the support of our country in the war, and

moral treason. At all times, we hold the duty of respectful obedience to government to be one of paramount Christian obligation, so long as it does not become unendurable in its oppressions. This obligation is all the stronger in our case, since we have so much to do with making the government, and providing an administration for it; and it is never so strong, in any case, with us or with any people, as when the country is at war. The putting the country at war is infinitely the most solemn and responsible of all the acts which government is ever called on to perform. It is their act, and not ours. As citizens, we are placed, by those who have a right to command us, in the relation of enemies to the people of another nation; and as between our own country and the common enemy, there can be no room for choice. We are committed from the beginning; and, for ourselves, we should not care to come into the councils of those who should even think it a point to be argued about. Nations go to war because there is no other mode of settling their disputes, when all peaceful means of adjustment have failed; just as two individuals might think themselves compelled to come to a trial of personal strength to end their disputes, if we could suppose them existing in what is called a "state of nature," and having no civil tribunals to which they might appeal. The appeal of two nations at war is to the ordeal of battle; and every citizen and member of each, on the one side and the other, is a party to the conflict and trial of strength. The part of patriotism in such a case is too plain to be mistaken. Besides; we do not hesitate to affirm in this case, that our country is not without good grounds of complaint against Mexico, of long standing; sufficient, if we had chosen so to consider them, according to abundant precedents among civilized nations, to justify reprisals and even war, if not otherwise redressed. And, though we should have been far from advocating a declaration of war by Congress for these causes, (the President could not make such a war at all without rank treason to the Constitution,) certainly until all peaceful measures for reparation had been tried; yet, since we are at war, and though it was not undertaken for these causes, Mexico has nothing to complain of, if we now count her our enemy till these injuries are redressed, or atoned for. Besides all this too; hostilities have been begun, and the sword of battle

foreign flora. He discovers in his mind an unexpected ease of adaptation, and perceives himself akin to all things organized. The splendid species of the tropics, seem like exaltations of the humbler plants that waved around him in his childhood; and he feels through them, as through the earth and man, the bond of the coinmon nature.

Returning to the consideration of the great effects of intertropical scenery, he attributes grandeur in a landscape to the assembling of all that is impressive in a single view, striking at once upon the mind, so as simultaneously to awaken in it a crowd of feelings and ideas. Nowhere are these effects more powerful than in the landscapes of the New World, where mountains of stupendous elevation form on all sides the bottom and brim of the atmospheric ocean, and where the power that lifted them from the sea, continues even now to shake and elevate its work. In the Cordilleras, where the line of perpetual snow is mostly at an elevation of fourteen thousand feet above the sea, vegetation rises to the summits of the highest peaks. "In the deeply cleft Andes of New Grenada and Quito, mankind have the privilege of contemplating all the varieties of vegetable form, and of seeing all the stars in the firmament at once. The same glance rests upon feathery palms and heliconias, proper to the tropics; and above these, on the higher slopes, are seen oak forests, and the plants of Europe. The eye takes in the pole star of the North, and the Magellanic clouds of the Southern circle. The laws of declining temperature are written to the eye upon the slopes of the mountains." "I lift but a corner of the veil from my recollections," he continues: but to comprehend the whole we must know the parts. In science as in art, the representation gains in power as the details are more distinct.

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Let us pause, then, a moment, and contemplate this picture." "On the hot plains near the level of the sea, we find Bananas, Cycadeas and Palms." "After them" in valleys at the feet of the grand plateaux, "tree-like ferns; next to these in the ascending order, ceaselessly watered by cool clouds, the Cinchonas, yielding the precious febrifuge bark; above them, on the ridges and high plains of the interior, we meet the Aralias of temperate climates, blooming in company

with myrtle-leaved Andromedas. The Alpine rose and gummy Befaria, form a purple belt about the mountains. And now ascended to a cold and stormy region, we lose sight of the lofty and large flowering kinds. Grasses only cover the slopes, forming vast meadows that look yellow in the distance, where the Llama sheep is seen feeding solitary, and the cattle of Europe roam wild in herds. In the intervals the rocks of the volcano, once molten lava, or mud thrown from the abysses of the earth, stand out hard and cold, or scantily covered with a gray and yellow growth of lichens. Patches of snow appear a little higher; and above these, sharply defined, begins the line of ice, covering the bell-shaped cone, that sends through its summit a vapor of water mingled with poisonous gases."*

After establishing, in the manner we have seen, with great fullness of thought and a crowd of illustration, the harmony of the scientific and imaginative views of nature, and the power of accurate observation in deepening the effect of scenery, and heightening the pleasures of imagination; the author comes next upon the consideration of that second species of enjoyment which springs from a satis faction of understanding; in detecting the order and the succession of species; in tracing the laws of changes; and in finding the principles or unities of all existences. And here he begins, by ascribing to the inhabitants of temperate climates a superiority over all others.

Among the nations of the temperate regions science had its origin, and seems destined to reach its height among the meditative people of the North. Here, too, the variety and complexity of atmospheric changes, while it perplexes, stimu lates inquiry. All parts of the world are known to them; they stand as intermediates affected by all, and therefore knowing all extremes. With them (the nations of the temperate zones) "begins that form of enjoyment which springs from ideas," or from meditation upon experience; and the construction of intellectual systems according to the truth of nature, removed equally from dull ignorance and heathen symbolism. Though the desire and the feeling be common to all mankind, they alone are able to satisfy it. "An indefinite dread sense of the unity of the powers of the world, of the mysterious bond which connects the

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THE present century has been eminently characterized by its critical spirit. Institutions and opinions, men, manners and literature, have all been subjected to the most exhausting analysis. The moment a thing becomes a fixed fact in the community, criticism breaks it to pieces, curious to scan its elements. It is not content to admire the man until satisfied with his appearance as a skeleton. The science of criticism is thus in danger of becoming a kind of intellectual anatomy. The dead and not the living body of a poem or institution is dissected, and its principle of life sought in a process which annihilates life at its first step. An analysis thus employing no other implements but those furnished by the understanding, must imperfectly interpret what has proceeded from the imagination. The soul ever eludes the knife of the dissector, however keen and cunning.

The charlatanism, which spreads and sprawls in almost every department of literature and life, is doubtless one cause of this analytical spirit. A man placed in our century finds himself surrounded by quackeries. Collision with these begets in him a feeling of impatience and petulant opposition, and ends often in forcing him to apply individual tests to all outward things. By this course he, at least, preserves his own personality amid the whiz and burr around him. None of that spurious toleration which comes from feebleness of thought, or laxity of will, or indifference to truth, makes him lend his ear to every moan of the noodle, and every promise of the quack. But this self-conscious ness, so jealous of encroachment, and battling against all external influences, shuts his mind to new truth as well as old error. He preserves his common sense at the expense of his comprehension. He is sensible and barren. His tiresome self-repetition becomes, at last, as hollow a mockery as the clap-trap of the charlatan.

This tendency to individualism-this testing the value of all things by their agreement or discordance with individual modes of thinking-subjects the author to hard conditions. He is necessarily viewed from an antagonistic position, and

considered an impostor until proved a reality. We think he is determined to fool us if he can, and are therefore most delighted and refreshed when we have analyzed the seeming genius down into the real quack. The life of the intellect thus becomes negative rather than positive

devoted to the exposure of error, not to the assimilation of truth. Men of strong minds in this generation have established a sort of intellectual feudal system-each baron walled in from approach, and sallying out only to prey upon his brothers. Everybody is on his guard against everybody else. An author has to fight his way into esteem. He must have sufficient force of being to be victorious over others: his readers are the spoils of his conquest. He attacks minds intrenched in their own thoughts and prejudices, and determined not to yield as long as their defences will hold out. The poetaster in Wycherley's play, binds the widow to a chair, in order that she may be compelled to listen to his well-penned verses. A resisting criticism, somewhat after the manner of the widow, is practiced unconsciously by most educated readers. It is mortifying to become the vassal of a superior nature; to feel the understanding bowed and bent before a conquering intellect, and be at once petulant and impotent. Butler's reasoning and Milton's rhetoric, fastening themselves as they do on the mind or heart, become at times distasteful, from the fact of our incapacity to resist their power. It is from men of education and ability that great genius experiences most opposition. The multitude can scarcely resist a powerful nature, but are forced into the current of its thoughts and impulses. The educated, on the contrary, have implements of defence. Their minds have become formal and hardened. Coleridge felt this deeply, when he exclaimed, "who will dare to force his way out of the crowd--not of the mere vulgar, but of the vain and banded aristocracy of intellect and presume to join the almost supernatural beings that stand by themselves aloof?" This aristocracy furnishes generally the champions of accredited opinions and processes. They flout the innovations of genius and philanthropy, as well as the fooleries of knavery and

ignorance. They desire nothing new, good or bad.

The influence of this spirit on criticism in the present century, has been incalculable. In those cases where personal and partisan feelings have not converted literary judgments into puffs or libels, the analytical and unsympathizing mode in which critical inquiries have been prosecuted has been unjust to original genius. Poets have been tried by tests which their writings were never intended to meet. Where a work is a mere collection of parts, loosely strung together, and animated by no central principle of vitality, analysis has only to cut the string to destroy its rickety appearance of life. As a large majority of productions, purporting to come from the human mind, are heterogeneous, not homogeneous; mechanical, not organic;-the works of what Fichte calls the hodmen of lettersthe course pursued by the critic, at least exposes deception. But the process by which imposture may be exposed, is not necessarily that by which truth can be evolved. A life spent in merely examining deceptions and quackeries, produces little fruit. A well-trained power to discern excellence, would include all the negative advantages of the other, and end also in the positive benefit of mental enlargement and elevation. Reading and judgment result in nothing but barrenness, when they simply confirm the critic's opinion of himself. The mind is enriched only by assimilation, and true intellectual independence comes not from the complacent dullness of the egotist. The mind that would be monarchial should not be content with a petty domain, but have whole provinces of thought for its dependencies. To comprehend another mind, we must first be tolerant to its peculiarities, and place ourselves in the attitude of learners. After that our judgment will be of value. The thing itself must be known, before its excellence can be estimated, and it must be reproduced before it can be known. By contemplation rather than analysis, by self-forgetfulness rather than self-confidence, does the elusive and ethereal life of genius yield itself to the mind of the critic.

If we examine the writings of some of the most popular critics of the present century, we shall find continual proofs of the narrowness to which we have referred. In a vast majority of cases, the criticism is merely the grating of one individual mind against another. The

critic understands little but himself, and his skill consists in a dexterous substitution of his own peculiarities for the laws of taste and beauty, or in sneeringly alluding to the difference between the work he is reviewing and works of established fame. Lord Jeffrey is an instance. The position in which he was placed, as editor of the most influential Review ever published, was one requir ing the most comprehensive thought and the most various attainments. At the period the Edinburgh Review was started, the literary republic swarmed with a host of vain and feeble poetasters, whose worthlessness invited destruction; but in the midst of these there were others, the exponents of a new and original school of poetry, whose genius required interpretation. Now the test to be applied to a critic, under such circumstances, is plain. Was his taste catholic? Did he perceive and elucidate excellence, as well as detect and punish pretension? Did he see the dawn on the mountain tops, as well as the will-o'-the-wisps, in the bogs beneath? Did he have any principles on which to ground his judgments, apart from the impertinences of his personality? We think not. Not in his writings are we to look for a philosophy of criticism. He could see that the consumptive hectic on the cheek of mediocrity was not the ruddy glow of genius. He could torture feebleness and folly on the rack of his ridicule. He could demonstrate that Mr. William Hayley and Mr. Robert Merry were poor successors of Pope and Dryden. But when he came to consider men like Wordsworth and Coleridge, we find the nimble-witted critic to be, after all, blind in one eye. Here were authors destined to work a great poetical revolution, to give a peculiar character to the literature of a generation, to have followers even among men of genius. In their earlier efforts, doubtless grave faults might have been discovered. Their thoughts were often vitiated by mental bombast; their expression, by simplicity that bordered on silliness, by obscurity that sometimes tumbled into the void inane. But amidst all their errors, indications were continually given of the vital powers of genius; of minds which, to the mere forms and colors of nature, could

"Add the gleam, The light that never was on sea or land, The consecration and the poet's dream."