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after a process of reasoning, a process always deliberate, and often tedious, in which the attention is liable to be dissipated, the judgment bewildered, and the mind impatient of its task to seek repose in the first convenient delusion. Thus released, it too often revels in the more passive enjoyments of sense, or employs its energies upon the interests of active life. In this state of passive impressions, blinded and confused by the occasional violence of passion, the mental philosopher finds most men, and proposes to lead them away from things seen, to conduct them into the labyrinths of their own minds, and teach them to inspect, compare, and classify, till order shall arise out of confusion, and they shall no more stumble upon error. Who then is more worthy of studious regard, than he who thus offers us a guide in matters of temporal and immortal interest? And yet he is neglected by us, and what is worse, we feel no insecurity on that account. Why is this? Have we made a covenant with truth and wisdom, and thereby secured their unfailing alliance? Heretofore they have been distant and cautious, yielding only to patient and assiduous enticements: are we favorites, or have we new charms to captivate and make them ours for ever? On the contrary, truth is as modest, among us, as ever, and as liable to be overlooked in the crowd of every-day thoughts. No one, indeed, doubts that we, or rather our fathers, have made great advances in the knowledge of the principles of religion and government,-but it is a question of serious import, whether we of this day are not clouding the prospects of the future, by neglecting the stern philosophy which they cherished;-whether we do not err, in dreaming that they did all the thinking, and left it to us to act only. The inquiry of course does not refer to all, but to the greater portion of community;-to those who hold in their own hands the interests of the church and the nation. Every one knows that the profound metaphysician is neglected by this class, and more, he is derided by many of those who call themselves philosophers. (It is to be hoped that a timely public verdict upon these latter will save us from the impositions of a most dangerous school of quackery.) We say every one knows the extent of this distaste for mental philosophy, and moreover, every one who knows any thing of the history or habits of the mind, knows also that it is the most successful way of inviting error. Such neglect is unsafe in any government, much more so in ours. For there are relations peculiar to ourselves which every thinking man must see, and which, in the view of every such man, invests this subject with tremendous consequences. Our government is an experiment. It arose without a model, the original conception of unperverted minds. It stands based upon truth;-embracing the interests of a mighty empire;-its portals thronged with crowds of admiring strangers, eager to commit their lives and fortunes to its protection ;-in it are the resources of wealth and power, the elements of stupendous action, and the unfolding destinies of future

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generations! And yet, with all these energies, it is only an experiment. If truth is maintained, its operations are safe, and all our hopes are realized. But if by any neglect of ours, this foundation fails, the mighty fabric must fall and bury us in its ruins. We have said that our government is based upon truth. Others are built upon power, and this is one of the considerations that show the vital connexion between a correct philosophy, appreciated and studied, and the welfare of the nation. Power, once triumphant, can secure itself against enemies more easily than truth. The tendency of the former is from victory to domination, its enemies yielding a forced submission at first, followed soon by abject subservience. But the enemies of truth gather a desperate malignity from every defeat. Since, therefore, it can only maintain a perpetual struggle with obstinate error, that government which relies upon this foundation for existence is unwise and unsafe, while neglecting a philosophy whose object is to qualify it to establish truth.

But this is not the only nor the greatest danger on this subject. Other governments are in the hands of a few individuals, who may, if they will, qualify themselves. In these, the ignorance and errors of the multitude never reach beyond the limits of their own domestic condition, and never affect the government. But with us, legislation is the joint business of all. The high and low, wise and ignorant, idle and busy, reflect alike their peculiar passions and prejudices in the government to which they contribute. The danger is increased by this circumstance, not only as the number of legislators, but much more in proportion as the facilities for corruption and error, are more abundant in such a promiscuous assemblage. If the government is to rest upon all, then all must have the ability to discover, as well as the integrity to vindicate correct principles. At any time there would be danger of neglecting in such a government that philosophy which alone can guide to the knowledge of intricate truth. But much more, at such a time as the present in this government, amidst all the activity and precipitance which our age and interests demand, is there danger of such neglect. There is already among us a class who have no power, and seemingly no disposition, to judge of truth, and are therefore ready to rush in any direction, under any impulse. Another and larger class, the active, are too busy to give time to philosophical inquiries, and are therefore rendering themselves incompetent to manage the concerns of a government, which, from their numbers, they must preserve or ruin. And the last and smallest class, who might advise, is too feeble to counteract the dangerous and growing indifference of the others. Such then is our government, and such its circumstances. Without a chart or a record of the course of any former adventurer, it has embarked upon an unexplored sea. Truth is the needle on which alone it depends for guidance, and this, if injured or its laws neglected, will only mislead. Those who conduct the course are al

ready, forgetting their dependence amidst the scenes of novelty and interest around them. The voice of alarm is heard in time to escape the danger and recover our course. But it calls for dispatch. We cannot, and every American ought to ponder it, conduct our nation safely through the dangers that encounter it, without a true and universally appreciated philosophy. Nor can we err long on this subject, and yet be safe. What we do takes hold of the future. A deviation of small account to-day, may open to-morrow wide from truth, and disclose an impassable chasm, separating us for ever from our hopes.

C. W.

THE TWILIGHT HOUR.

THE murmurs of day are sunk at its close,
The evening steals on with its dreamy repose,
And the charm of its starlit sky;

And the last gleam of twilight lingering still,
Flings the blush of its beauty on forest and hill,
Like the hope that enlivens the heart's lonely chill,
When the pure in spirit die.

The song of the warblers is hush'd on the air,
And the vapors are gathering silently there
Their crystals of pearly dew;-

From their home in the west the light zephyrs come,
And their bosom is specked with the silvery foam
Of the clouds that aloft on their pathway roam,
Through fields of the upper blue.

Oh, dearer to me than the glare of the day
Is the first star of eve, with its pensive ray

Just glimmering into life;

'Tis a pledge that the passions which sicken us here,
Shall be hushed when the evening of age is near,

And the star of a brighter hope shall appear

Beyond this mortal strife.

Thus when the brief day of our being is o'er,

And weary we stand on time's farthest shore,

The ties that have bound us all riven,

May the night that shall gather its shade round our tomb,
With the star of our faith illumine its gloom,

And awake with the morn that shall welcome us home
To the unfading light of heaven.

REVIEW.

The Young Lady's Friend; by a Lady. Boston: American Stationers' Company. 1837.

-"Licuit, semperque licebit

Parcere personis, dicere de vitiis.”—Hor.

WE beg leave to introduce to young ladies this "Friend," whose acquaintance we doubt not will prove invaluable. Ye who are under the eye of a governess, who pull the hair of duennas and abhor the idea of a step-mother, here is a "Friend" who will relieve you from all such thraldom. A Friend who can instruct, but has no tongue to scold; who will give you most excellent advice, but no "black marks" for neglecting it; attend you at the toilet without criticising your dress, or reading your love letters, or reporting your peccadillos; walk with you, and yet be blind to your coquetry and Airtations; give you the best of counsel at home, the most unexceptionable chaperonage abroad, and finally usher you-listen to thisinto that elysium of hope, a successful marriage. Duennas! your empire has fallen! give up the truncheon-enrol your names on that list which is said to be kept at 28 Cornhill, Boston, with a description of your age, person, temper, fortune. Missionaries must have wives-there is some hope for you yet.

"

The object of the work at the head of this article is to furnish young ladies with a manual of politeness, with authority upon every doubtful point of etiquette, regulate their "domestic economy," their "health," the employment of their time;" conduct to the "sick," to "parents," "brothers," "gentlemen," "domestics," at "public places," at "parties," at "visits," when "traveling;" in short, to supply rules for behavior in every possible combination of

circumstances.

“Gratia, fama, valetudo contingat abunde,

Et mundus victus, non deficiente crumena."

Now notwithstanding this is an object infinitely desirable, there is still a question, whether writing a book-even admitting that it finds readers is the surest and best way of accomplishing it: that is to say, is there any such thing as giving a recipe for manufacturing ladies? Now a lady, according to the definition of our authoress, is one, "who to inbred modesty and refinement, adds a scrupulous attention to the rights and feelings of others. Let her worldly possessions be great or small, let her occupations be what they may, such an one is a lady, a gentlewoman. Whilst the person who is

bold, coarse, vociferous, and inattentive to the rights and feelings of others, is a vulgar woman, let her possessions be ever so great, and her way of living ever so genteel."-p. 319. This coincides with the views we have ever entertained upon this subject, viz. that ladies, like poets, must have something innate, some "inbred modesty and refinement," and that an attempt to make a lady out of one who is destitute of these qualities, "one who is bold, coarse, vociferous," is as absurd and ridiculous, as to make a poet out of a mathematician, a sedate citizen out of a wandering gipsy, or a dignified orator out of an inflated civic magistrate. Would Maggie Mucklebackit have become a gentlewoman, if she had been transported from a fisherman's hut to a parlor, received lessons from a French dancing master, and practiced callisthenics? Would "Sally" of Tontine memory become a personification of grace and refinement, by cultivating a more intimate acquaintance with Madame Cantelo, subscribing to the circulating library, and committing to memory the four hundred and thirty two pages of the "Young Lady's Friend?" Is there any affinity between the mind which delights in gossiping at the corners of the street, brandishing a broomstick, engaging in rows, tearing the eyes of "beloved lords," and adorning the bar of Police Courts, and that mind which shrinks instinctively from vulgarity, delights in the purest, most refined enjoyments, breathes, speaks and exemplifies that spirit of charity and love which throws over earth the air of heaven. A mind which is naturally delicate and refined, will exhibit these feelings every where. Her manners will assimilate to the company she keeps. The shortest experience will make her a grace in the drawing room, and teach her the etiquette of fashionable society, as if these spheres were native. And if it requires rules to teach woman the appropriate duties of a mother and sister, if she requires a code of formalism to regulate her conduct in these relations, if our mother's kindness in helpless infancy, and our sister's sympathy in wayward boyhood, gushed not spontaneously from the heart, then is memory changed into a fountain of bitter waters; then are the visions of hope, the choicest pleasures of fancy, the last anchor of wavering virtue, annihilated at a blow. But above all, will the innate delicacy of woman, aided by the most common of educations, preserve her from every indecorum in public places, where all eyes are fixed upon her, and graduate her intercourse with the other sex by the standard of propriety and decorum. We use the words of the authoress when we say that "women are happily endowed with a quick sense of propriety, and a natural modesty, which will generally guide them aright in their intercourse with the other sex." Therefore we say, that rules like the following are not only entirely useless, but will create the very evil it is their intention to remedy. And we should conceive that an individual who could seriously give such counsel as this, had never entered into the spirit of the trite maxim, honi soit qui mal y pense.

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