to the far-off West, where, as by enchantment, the dark forests put on the livery of the tamed landscape, while towns, villages, and even cities, rise to our astonished vision; and in the bending of our own forests, the dwindling of our own mountains, causing rivers, lakes, and oceans in one flood to blend - render a nice and just discrimination of character more difficult. To this may be ascribed the unsatisfactory accounts (caricatures we might say) of our manners and habits. They have taken the peculiarities of an individual as illustrative of a section of our country. From this superficial and hasty observation, so well described by our author-from that 'overlooking of the under-current of society' - he himself has been insensible to those changes of character and opinion constantly going on, by which numerous errors have been palmed upon the public.

“Our author asserts, that the emigrant's wending his way to New-York in search of better soil, is the great cause of the difference between the two sections, i.e. 'in their habits, tastes, politics and religion! The connection between cause and effect here, is not apparent. It is for the writer alone to understand and explain the modus operandi of the soil affecting the politics or religion of the emigrant!

Again: How the early emigrant 'burst away' from those puritanical restraints, blue laws from a land cursed by savage barbarity, manifesting a murderous thirst for religious opinions, yet possessing those very opinions, cherishing those very laws and principles, from which they 'burst away' -is also left unexplained.

"Again: These emigrants became independent in bearing, chivalrous in privation,'

etc.

We should think that the very act of separation, of bursting,' shows most conclusively, that there was an independence in bearing, even before they located themselves within the precincts of New Amsterdam;' if so, our author's loca mutantur,' etc., falls to the ground; for effects, in New-England, seldom precede the cause.

"As to New-England 'remaining stationary, bigoted,' etc., nothing is wider from the truth; and the declaration is but another instance of the writer's guessing at facts. But what is and has been the character of New-England, can be gathered from her institutions and her acts. True, the puritans had their faults; they imbibed errors, but they were those of the times.

"The puritans, feeling that they owed a higher allegiance to Him,

'Who wheels his throne upon the rolling worlds,'

than to any earthly power, resolved to emigrate to the then 'New World.' Scarce had they been here ten years, in this howling wilderness, before they founded and endowed the University of Cambridge, and that institution was nursed by them, and now stands erect, in the midst of her offspring, clothed with her ancient glory and native dignity, and lovelier by her age. Their language at that time was:

After God carried us safe to New-England, and we had builded our houses, provided necessaries for our livelihood, reared convenient places for God's worship, and settled the civil government, one of the next things we longed for and looked after, was to advance learning, and to perpetuate it to posterity.'* "From these authenticated facts, we can arrive at the character of the puritans, their zeal in the cause of religious freedom-their enterprise their love of letters. If there was not chivalry exemplified in their conduct-contempt of danger, patient endurance of toil, and physical hardihood - we shall search in vain for illustrations of those attributes.

"But the picture does not end here. Their early political organization was radically republican. They declared the people to be the legitimate source of power. On this was based their institutions thus their magistrates were chosen-thus their colonial legislature. After the first charter, they recognised the great rights secured by the Magna Charta of England. They also struck at the very root of a colonial nobility, by the passage of a law for the distribution of intestate estates.

"True, the puritans had their errors, the grand one of which was, the supposed necessity of a union between Church and State-the investing the civil magistrate with the power of taking care of religious matters. Thus the secular arm was raised for the suppression of heresy. But it may here be observed, that although she first lighted up the fire of religious persecution, she first proclaimed the human mind free. She declared 'that the conscience should be free, and men should not be punished for worshipping God in the way they were persuaded he required.'

"In 1647,' says Hutchinson, they ordered every township of fifty house-holders to maintain a public school, at public expense; and every township of one hundred householders to maintain, in like manner, a grammar school, to instruct youth and fit them for the University, to the end,' say they in this law, 'that learning may not be buried in the graves of our forefathers, in the church and commonwealth.'

"It is to this system of public instruction to which the sons of New-England look

back and point the traveler with pride, and not to family nor any artificial distinction. This system has been carried out. Free schools have thus been brought into every neighborhood. The high and the low, the rich and the poor, are blessed with the means of education and they are embraced. They then early understand their rights-that 'knowledge is power' - and drink in and exemplify the great lesson of human life, 'nec vero satis est habere virtutem nisi utare.' So universal is this instruction, that we are prepared to hazard the assertion, that there is not one hundred New-England families that cannot read, write, and compute numbers: that are ignorant of the geography of our country. Again, there are more quarterlies, monthlies, and newspapers- more Literary, religious, and political publications- taken in Massachusetts, than in the great, populous, and wealthy State of New-York. So in the other states in proportion. They are emphatically a reading and a thinking people; they foster talent wherever found.

"There are distinctions in society-the upper and lower classes' yet they are rarely the result of wealth and family, but of moral qualities, united with high intellectual endowments. The same reverence that, in New-York, is paid to realth, is in New-England paid to intellect. In New-England there are but few very rich, and but

few very poor.

"If we look at Massachusetts, we shall find her most literary and talented men occupying her most important stations. See Adams, Davis, Webster, Everett, Saltonstall, and Cushing, in the political department; and where are the men of equal powers employed in the empire state? With one or two exceptions, they are in private life. This constitutes the difference between the policy of the two states. There, genius, talents, and high attainments, are primary considerations - here, secondary at best.

"As to the charge of New-England's 'unaltered puritanical notions, and her claims to superior sanctity,' we would remark, that there are not ten churches there that dhere to the old puritanical platform. Cambridge and Yale have put forth an influence favorable to liberal principles, that is felt to the extremes of the Union. The night has long since closed upon that period when opinions, political or religious, were received on trust. Cambridge has done much, and Yale has done more, among the puritans. 'The new school divinity,' which is liberal in its bearing, has already gained over seven-eighths of the churches of the old-fashioned puritans.

"True, the emigrant from New-England seeks the exuberantly-fertile soil of NewYork, and undergoes a change by his contact with his new neighbors; but of the character of this change, all can judge. He is removed from a reading to a moneymaking community. He loses his taste for reading, and the New-England party-mingling spirit, and how to make money, absorbs the whole power of his soul. He thus continues of the opinion he imbibed when he read, and had materials of which to form an opinion. This is visible on the face of our Yankee or New-England population in New-York-this is the transformation a New-England man undergoes in coming to New-York; this accounts for his peculiarities.

"On the remark that emigrants become chivalrous, daring, hardy, patient under privations, upon coming here, we would observe, that the history of New-England is but a catalogue of hardships, privations, and deeds of noble daring. There was the cradle of liberty' - there was the ball of revolution put in motion. Lexington, Bunker's Hill, Bennington, Saratoga, Trenton, Yorktown, and Brandywine, or in still later times, Plattsburgh, Bridgewater, Chippewa, as well as Champlain and Erie, tell of the bravery of her sons. Here we would point our author to periods and places that tried men's souls. On these occasions, the buoyant youth, the vigorous man, the declining age, of New-England, went down to the bosom of their mother earth, in glorious fight! New-England need take no lessons of her sisters, to show that she possessed the unbought grace of life,' as Burke called chivalry. No! The fame of New-England is beyond the reach of circumstances: the pillar may fall, the triumphal arch may crumble, but each successive generation of her sons become living monuments of the excellence of her institutions- of her public schools. She needs no beaming ægis to stand between her and oblivion. Her fame is unsullied and immortal."

Ithaca, (N. Y.) October, 1836.

C. R.

'MAKE tracks!' reader, or in other words, stand out of the way, and let 'POETASTER' illustrate the Ornithichnites, or huge stony bird-tracks, of Professor HITCHCOCK, said to have been found on the red-sandstone of the Connecticut Valley. On reading the account of these,' says our correspondent, 'published in the twenty-ninth volume of the American Journal of Science, it occurred to me that there was at least probability enough in the theory advanced in that work, to make it lawful to use it in verse; and as there came up in my imagination the bird that formed the enormous Ornithichnites Giganteus, perhaps fifteen or twenty feet high, and with a foot seventeen inches in length,

my long dormant muse was aroused to action; and before I was aware of it, I was astride of my Pegasus; and although, from original malformation or long disuse,

'he scrambled up and down

On disproportioned legs, like kangaroo,'

yet he did not pause till he had finished his flight.' The reader shall have a glance at his paces.

The writer supposes a geologist, solus, examining traces of the Ornithichnites Giganteus on the sand-stone, whose shade ke apostrophizes thus :

A THOUSAND pyramids have moulder'd down,
Since on this rock thy foot-print was impress'd;
Yet here it stands unalter'd though since then
Earth's crust has been upheav'd, and fractur'd oft:
And deluge after deluge o'er her driven,
Has swept organic life from off her face.
Bird of a former world!-would that thy form
Might reappear in these thy former haunts!

O for a sorceress nigh, to call thee up

From thy deep sandstone-grave, as erst of old
She broke the prophet's slumbers! But her arts
She may not practice in this age of light.

ENTER SORCERESS.

"Let the light of science shive!
I will show that power is mine.
Skeptic, cease my art to mock,
When the dead starts from the rock.
Bird of sandstone era, wake!
From thy deep, dark prison, break!
Spread thy wings upon our air-
Show thy huge, strong talons here:
Let them print the muddy shore,
As they did in days of yore.
Præadamic bird, whose sway
Rul'd creation in thy day,
Come, obedient to my word:
Stand before creation's lord"

The sorceress vanish'd; but the earth around,
As when an earthquake swells her bosom, rock'd;
And stifled groans, with sounds ne'er heard before,
Broke on the startled ear. The placid stream
Began to heave and dash its billows on the shore;
Till soon, as when Balæna spouts the deep,
The waters suddenly leap'd toward the sky;
And up flew swiftly, what a sawyer seem'd,
But prov'd a bird's neck, with a frightful beak.
A huge-shaped body follow'd; stilted high,
As if two main masts propp'd it up. The bird
Of sandstone fame was truly come again;
And shaking his enormous plumes and wings,
And rolling his broad eye around, amaz'd,
He gave a yell so loud and savage too-
Though to Iguanodons and kindred tribes,
Music it might have seem'd-on human ear
It grated harshly, like the quivering roar
That rushes wildly through the mountain gorge,
When storms beat heavy on its brow. Anon,
On wings like mainsails, flapping on the air,
The feather'd giant sought the shore, where stood,
Confounded, he who called the sorceress' aid.

Awhile, surveying all, the monster paus'd;

The mountain, valley, plain- the woods, the fields,
The quiet stream, the village on its banks,

Each beast and bird. Next the geologist

Was scann'd, and scann'd again, with piercing glance.
Then arching up his neck, as if in scorn,

His bitter, taunting plaint he thus began:

'Creation's lord! The magic of those words
My iron slumbers broke: for in my day

I stood acknowledg'd as creation's head; *
In stature and in mind surpassing all:
But now -O strange degeneracy! — one,
Scarce six feet high, is styled creation's lord!
If such the lord, what must the servants be!
Oh how unlike Iguanodon, next me

In dignity, yet moving at my nod.

Then Mega, Plesi, Hyla, Saurian tribes,
Rank'd uext along the grand descending scale:
Testudo next: below, the Nautilus,

The curious Ammonite, and kindred forms;
All giants to these puny races here,
Scarce seen, except by Ichthyosaurian eye.t
Gone, too, the noble palms, the lofty ferns,
The Calamite, Stigmaria, Voltzia — all: ‡
And O, what dwarfs, unworthy of a name,
(Iguanodon could scarce find here a meal,)

Grow o'er their graves! Here, too, where ocean roll'd,
Where coral groves the bright green waters grac'd,
Which glorious monsters made their frolic haunts;
Where the long sea-weed strew'd its oozy bed,
And fish, of splendid forms and hues, rang'd free,
A shallow brook, (where only creatures live,
Which in my day were Sauroscopic called,)
Scarce visible, now creeps along the waste.
And ah! this chilling wind! - a contrast sad
To those soft, balmy airs, from fragrant groves,
Which fann'd the never-varying summer once.
E'eu he who now is call'd creation's lord,
(I call him rather nature's blasted slave,)
Must smother in these structures, dwellings call'd,
(Creation's noble palace was my home,)

Or these inclement skies would cut him off.

The sun himself shines but with glimmering light –

And all proclaims the world well nigh worn out:
Her vital warmth departing, and her tribes

Organic, all degenerate, puny, soon

In nature's icy grave to sink for aye. §
Sure 't is a place for punishment design'd;
And not the beauteous, happy spot I lov'd;
These creatures here seem discontented, sad;
They hate each other, and they hate the world:
O who would live in such a dismal spot?
I freeze, I starve, I die! — with joy I sink
To my sweet slumbers with the noble dead.'

Strangely and suddenly the monster sunk.
Earth oped and closed her jaws - and all was still.
The vex'd geologist now call'd aloud —
Reach'd forth his hand to seize the sinking form —
But empty air alone ho grasp'd. Chagrinned,

That he could solve no geologic doubts,

Nor learn the history of sandstone days,

He pour'd out bitter words 'gainst sorcery's arts:
Forgetting that the lesson taught his pride

Was better than new knowledge of lost worlds.

• Before the discovery of these Ornithichnites, the most perfect animals that had been found, as low down in the rocks as the new red-sandstone, were a few reptiles, called Saurians: so that birds must have been decidedly the most perfect animals that then existed: though it has been recently announced in the journals, that the tracks of quadrumanous animals have been found on new red-sandstone in Germany. But until I have seen the details of this discovery, I am not disposed to let it spoil my poetry: for as to some quadrumanous animals, I think that birds might successfully compete with them for the palm of superiority.

↑ The Ichthyasaurus, another huge and extinct Saurian animal, was remarkable for the size of its eye; the orbit in some specimens measuring ten inches in length, and seven in breadth.

The organic remains found in the rocks of the temperate and frigid zones correspond more nearly to those now found alive in the torrid zone, than to those in the temperate and frigid zones. Indeed, there can be no doubt but the northern hemisphere was once covered with tropical forests: such as the palm and the ferns of huge size. The Calamite, Stigmaria, and Voltzia, are names given to plants found in the new red-sandstone, which do not correspond to any now found upon the globe.

§ If it be admitted that the climate, vegetation, and animals of this valley were tropical, when this bird lived, who will say that its present condition would not seem, even to a rational being, in similar circumstances, to be one of deterioration and approaching ruin ?

THE following embraces, in a brief space, valuable facts and conclusive argument, and is from the port-folio of an able writer and ripe scholar :

In a volume denominated 'Pensées de Leibnitz,' or 'Thoughts of Leibnitz,' I find the following very just observations upon what that Newton of Germany calls ancienneté du dogme de l'immortalité de l'âme, or the antiquity of the dogma of the soul's immortality.

'Monsieur Toland a prétendu dans un de ses ouvrages, que le dogme de l'immortalité de l'âme étoit une invention des Egyptiens. Mais il est très évident que les Grecs des âges les plus reculés ont crue cette même immortalité. Elle étoit aussi reconnue par les Druides Gaulois, suivant le témoignage de Lucan. Les peuples de la Virginie, dans l'Amerique, croient que les âmes des morts habitent au delà d'une haute chaîne de montagnes. Et qui ne sait pas que l'opinion de la mètempsychose, que suppose evidemment l'immortalité de l'âme, est tres ancienne dans les Indes.'

Here we see that Leibnitz combats the opinion of Toland, that the doctrine of the soul's immortality had its origin in Egypt, by alleging that it was prevalent in Greece from time immemorial, and that it prevailed also among the Druids of Gaul, and still subsists among the American Indians, as well as the inhabitants of Hindostan. To this argument, may be added, that it is a doctrine which has been held by the Chinese, who pretend to trace back their history to a much more remote era than that in which Egypt was formed into a regular community, and that no nation has ever been discovered so savage and ignorant as not to recognise it, together with the belief in a God - not even the Patagonians and Hottentots. This universal belief, then, is a moral phenomenon, which it is the province of the philosopher to explain. How shall he account for it? If the Egyptians, or any other early civilized nation, had invented it, this would not have conveyed it to all mankind. Unless its foundation had been deeply laid in the principles of human nature, it would soon have passed away, among those delusions which time and advancing science invariably destroy. Instead of this, Science, when she brought it into controversy in the schools of Greece and Rome, although, as was to be expected, she produced her skeptics about this as about every other truth, yet upon the whole, enlisted her best sages in its behalf. Do not these considerations confirm the doctrine of immortality, and prove that all that Egypt did in this respect was not, as asserted by Toland, to invent it, but to add to the simple suggestions of nature the decorations of fancy, and give to the airy conceptions of men about it, a fictitious habitation and significant symbols?

F. B.

'SCENE IN A WOOD' is evidently from an unpractised hand; but the writer has a heart to feel the beauties of Nature, and possesses a treasure in the quiet satisfaction with which he enjoys a communion with her visible forms. We subjoin an extract :

THE changing shadows thickly fall around,
And the rich sunshine from the quiet west
Comes down among the overhanging leaves,
And gives to all a mellow, golden green,
Save where the shadows of the leaves above
Deepen their greenness, and the chequered gleams
Stream down through all the various openings,
And brighten the soft grass and woodland flowers,
And the rich brown wood-mould. A little stream
Comes winding from afar, through light and shade,
O'er sands and pebbles in its quiet path,

And seems to greet with its sweet joyous sounds,
The wild-wood flowers upon its rural marge,

That nodding gently to it, seem to list

To its glad, gentle language, and then leaps
At intervals o'er blue rocks in its bed,
In gentle waterfalls.