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as she does not now, possess a republican PEOPLE. She must cultivate the civil idea; she must abandon her military parade; she must discard her bombast and grandiloquence; she must banish the despots who have debauched and plundered her; she must reform her social life, and learn to believe that there are other pleasures worthy the notice of men, besides gambling, bull-baiting and. cock-fighting; and, above all, she must establish religious liberty. It is an absurd idea, that nationality can be preserved by enforcing catholicity, by virtue of the constitution. The Roman church must consent to share this earth-the patrimony of mankind—with other believers and spiritual labourers. It cannot monopolize the soil, even if it can control the faith. The day of monopoly is gone; that of individuality has come, and there can be no good government that is not founded on tolerant Christianity, which is the creed of love, the enemy of force, the founder of true democracy.

"When an orderly and firm government shall have been established, Mexico will be refreshed continually by the energizing blood of a hardy, industrious white race, from beyond the sea. The various nations, commingling slowly, by marriage, with the white Mexicans, will amalgamate and neutralize each other into homogeneous nationality. Mexico will thus gradually congregate a people. The language of the country will, in all likelihood, be preserved, for the white natives, who now speak Spanish, will of course form, for years, the bulk of the population, and when they die, their offspring and the offspring of the emigrant will know but one tongue. There will thus be no violent extirpation of race, but a slow and genial modification. Modern inventions, science, tastes, emulation, new forms of thought, new modes of development, will be introduced and implanted by these emigrants. The million of white men, and the two million of Mestizos, will become more prosperous under the increased trade and industry of the nation. A good government will be insured for the hardy emigrants who fly from the political oppression and poverty of the Old World, to enjoy peaceful liberty in this."

Again we commend these suggestions, which embody a sound wisdom, to the consideration of the intelligent and reflecting in Mexico; and we would also urge upon them the necessity of immediate action, if they would verify by experiment the wisdom of the advice given to them. The world is progressive, though Mexico is not, and it looks with dissatisfaction upon this waste of advantages, this locking-up of magnificent resources, this halt in the great march of advancement. If Mexico does not soon take care of herself, the philanthropy of the age will be

apt to step in to her assistance. There are great considerations of human progress, and broad views of the vast results to the world, in the influences of that progress upon such a country as Mexico, that may, some of these days, substitute occupation for emigration, and make her great, in spite of herself. J. M. H.

Baltimore, April 20th.

NOTE. We have been struck with the very excellent manner in which this work has been brought out by the publisher, Mr. Drake. The paper is good, and the typography clear and well-executed. The illustrations assist the text, in the descriptive portions, very pleasantly, and are, we learn, the work of Mr. Frank Mayer, of Baltimore, a young gentleman who has just started upon his career as an artist, with the highest promise of eminent reputation and success. We are informed that he is now engaged upon some illustrative works, that will afford a fine field for his talents and tastes, and bid fair to make him most favourably known.

THE

PROPERTY

RK

SOCIETY LIBRARY

ART. VII. THE BARON DEKALB.

1. Washington and the Generals of the American Revolution. Philadelphia: Carey & Hart.

2. Washington and his Generals. By J. T. HEADLEY. New-York: Baker & Scribner.

3. Encyclopædia Americana. Article, Baron DeKalb. 4. Letters of the Baron DeKalb, addressed to the President of Congress. Edited from the originals, never before published, among the papers of the Hon. Henry Laurens. Charleston, S. C.

In naming the three first publications mentioned in our rubric, it is not our purpose to review them. The third of these constitutes a very useful work of reference, for which there is no American substitute; the two first have had their day, having been designed mostly for a present market. Certainly, this must be said of the work of Mr. Headley, which seems to have contemplated nothing more than a popular run, during a season when his peculiar style of eloquence was found temporarily attractive-a season when the hot blood of the country was greatly aroused, in consequence of the Oregon difficulties with Great Britain and the war with Mexico, and when the

valour of quiet citizens seemed to require all the stimulus which could possibly be drawn from hyperbole. The historical value of the collection of biographies issued by Carey & Hart is very superior to that of Headley. It exhibits greater industry and research, more caution and conscientiousness, and, though the employment of various hands deprives it of some attractions, as a work of art, in lessening its symmetry and distinguishing it by inequalities of style and manner, yet, even this defect is measurably repaired by the excellence of certain of the biographies, the writers of which were more concerned in their subjects, and more curious and earnest in their researches, than is commonly the case with authors of works of this description. We employ these several books, in this connection, with regard to a single subject onlythat of the Baron DeKalb-of whom we are prompted to speak in consequence of our possession of some hitherto unpublished letters, a small portion of that voluminous correspondence which the Baron was known to have carried on, and about the political character of which, some curious, but, we believe, unfounded suspicions, seem to have been entertained. With all the facts and clues that they afford, the memoir of this distinguished foreigner must yet be a very meagre and unsatisfactory one.

The Baron DeKalb was a German; but the particular place of his birth is not on record-nor, indeed, are we better advised as to the time when it took place. From some wandering and extravagant passages in Weems's Life of Marion, a work of no authority, he is stated, on the alleged authority of General Horry, to have avowed himself to be sixty-three years old in 1780, and to have been forty-two years a soldier, under the King of France. But we have had Horry's MSS. in our possession, and they contain no such particulars. Horry disclaimed the book ascribed to him by Weems, and, in strong language, denounced its falsehoods and absurdities. The probability is, that the romantic and sentimental dialogue which Weems reports, in which DeKalb makes these statements, is a pure invention of the amiable but extravagant parson, who, to point a moral, was always very apt to construct a tale. He had a very loose notion of the privi leges of the historian, and, indeed, writing to Horry, expressly declares that his plan was to make the Life of

Marion a historical romance. At all events, assuming the statement of Weems to be correct, the Baron was born in 1717. If, in 1780, he had been in the service of the King of France forty-two years, he was necessarily twenty-one when he entered it. Had he served previously to this, in his own country? and by what services, in France, had he acquired the reputation which secured him, under its monarch, the rank of a brigadier-general and the order of military merit? It is surely not unreasonable to suppose that a little diligent research in the libraries and archives of France would have secured all the necessary information on these points, in the case of a person so distinguished. But neither of the works before us offers to supply it. Their writers seem not for a moment to have conceived the inquiry to be at all important to the biography, and have given us, accordingly, little more than a dilation of the brief paragraph in the Encyclopædia Americana.

In 1757, as we are told by this latter publication, the season of "the Old French War," the Baron DeKalb was sent out to the American colonies, by the government of France, "in order to learn the points in which they were most vulnerable, and how far the seeds of discontent might be sown in them towards the mother country." The authority for this statement is not given. In the execution of this commission, he was arrested by the English authorities in America, as a suspected person; but nothing seems to have been brought against him to confirm these suspicions. Where he was seized, and what were the grounds of his seizure, are matters which our chroniclers have not deemed it important to set down. After being discharged from custody, he proceeded to Canada, where he remained until that country was conquered by the British arms. Whether he served in Canada, and where, we are not told. His name certainly appears nowhere in any of the common histories of that fearful and capricious struggle, distinguished by the equal genius and valour of Montcalm and Wolfe. As a brigadier, in the service of France so many years as one so highly distinguished by the peculiar employment confided to his special agency in the American colonies-we surely ought to hear of him, from some quarter, during this period: there should be records, as well in Canada as in

France, showing his presence and performances, in this period of ceaseless conflict and wonderful vicissitude. We suggest these points, that they may become objects of inquiry with those who may yet think to revise and enlarge the field of American biography.

With the fall of the French power in Canada, DeKalb returned to France. We hear no more of him from that period till the opening of the grand struggle of the American colonies for independence. How had he been employed meanwhile? Had he resumed his place in the service of France, and did he then hold any rank in her armies? These are questions to which an answer might certainly be found, the inquiry being made in the right places. We do not hear of him again till 1776, (an interval of twenty years since he had been employed in America,) and then we find him introducing Lafayette to the good offices of Silas Deane, one of our agents in Paris, through whom the Marquis became known to Deane's official associates, Arthur Lee and Franklin. These gentlemen, however, offered but little encouragement to Lafayette to come to America. They had been cautioned against their too easy disposition to receive foreigners into the service, all of whom stipulated for high rank, and very few of whom really deserved it. Washington and the American Congress were already beginning to experience much annoyance, from the number and the arrogance of these people, and the jealousies occasioned among our own officers, in consequence of the favour and frequent preference which had been shown them. Franklin, in particular, was censured for his too great accessibleness in this respect, and the injurious facility with which he had encouraged the claims of European adventurers. Washington writes to him earnestly on the subject, and particularly insists upon the too frequent worthlessness of the parties upon whom rank had so liberally been bestowed. The result was, that the American commissioners in France had become costive; Lafayette had no encouragements held out to him, and, unless Deane had previously committed himself to DeKalb, the Baron was probably treated in the same manner. But neither Lafayette nor DeKalb was to be discouraged. The enthusiasm of the one, and perhaps the cooler policy of the other-for DeKalb's character seems not to have had

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