bring to his profession, by showing how it adds an outward grace of ornament to his dwelling and his person. We would speak of the inherent dignity of living within our means. To all, we would say, dare to be republicans. And as you love your country, study in all things, the severe simplicity of taste. Live towards this mark, and reason towards it, and, if you please, sharpen your argument with ridicule. Look, what a spectacle this great nation will exhibit, when it is occupied as a realm of taste-when the neat cottages sprinkled over the hills, and blended with the elegant mansions of the rich-when the graceful dress of our people, their fine truthful manners, the genial glow of their society, their hightoned liberty and tasteful piety, combine to show the dignity of our institutions.-.

REVERENCE TO PARENTS.

Do not forget the pains, and weariness, and watching, and fatigue which your parents have experienced for you. You think them peevish perhaps. Did they never bear with your fruitlessness— never pass over your faults, and look with a tender eye on all your mistakes? You are busy, it may be, and cannot spare the time to render them any attention. Were they too busy to watch over your helplessness, to guide your unskillful feet; to sit by your sick bed weary days and more weary nights? They are old, perhaps, and you can enjoy yourself better with your young companions. Your young companions may be pleasant, and you may pass your time very easily among them; but who of all the number will care for you as has your own tender and perhaps forsaken mother? "Forget not thy mother when she is old." Then is the time she needs your support, your presence, your cheerful voice, to comfort her heart and guide her trembling steps during the last and the most difficult part of her journey. Whatever may be the fashion of the world, or whatever may be the opinions and practice of others, let nothing cause you to withhold the love and respect due to your parents. Do not give them a rude or impertinent answer, you will be sorry for it when they are dead. Do not leave them to be cared for by others, or to take care of themselves; you will regret it when they can no more be benefitted by your attentions. Do not compel them to toil hard over that which they have a right to expect you to do; it will make you ashamed when their weary limbs have finished their labor, and they lie down to rest.

Within those vales, what glorious creatures bide!
Birds, Iris-plumed, dart out from every tree,
And graceful shapes sport on the mountain side,
Tossing their antlered frontlets as they flee;
Insects, whose gay wings flash resplendently,
Winnow the sunshine; and a murmuring sound,
As if the flowers were breathing melody,

From minstrel bees, that wheel the blossoms round, Comes with the clover's breath, up from the dewy ground.

And when the wind howls through the giant pines,
That far aloft the sheltering mountains gird,
The pendant tendrils shake not on the vines,
In those calm valleys; not a leaf is stirred;
Scarce is the surging of the tempest heard:
But by the drops the black clouds weep the while,
On flower and tree new beauty is conferred;
And when the sun looks forth, the green defile

Hath won from Heaven's dark frown a brighter, holier smile!

And then the prairies! Lovely, when the spring
Hangs o'er their wastes of green her hazy veil;
Sublime, when heaving with an ocean swing,
Rolls the tall grass before the autumn gale,
Tossing, like foam, the withered flowerets pale.
Behold a grander scene! Some hand hath thrown
A fire-brand mid the herbage! Words would fail
To paint the kindled desert, red and lone,

When the flame reaps by night the harvest God hath sown!

Onward, still onward, sweeps the scorching tide;

A forest bars its desolating way;

Swift through the fallen leaves the flashes glide,
Lick the huge trunks, and dart from spray to spray!
Streams through the green arcades the lurid ray,
Startling from bush and bough a feathered swarm;
Through the tree-tops the flames like lightnings play,
And ere hath reeled one proud oak's glowing form,
Over the forest's roof hath passed the blazing storm.

Again it bursts across the treeless waste,
Upon the strong wings of the hurricane;
Affrighted herds, from grassy covert chased,
Before its angry rush their sinews strain:
But hark! the dash of waters o'er the plain
Comes, blended with the conflagration's roar;
Through yon tall bluffs that wear a ruddy stain,
Missouri's chafing waves impetuous pour;

The blaze half leaps the tide, then fades to flash no more.

With vernal days, up from the blackened wild,
O'er circling leagues, the tufted grass shall spring,
And Beauty, Desolation's blooming child,
Shall far and wide her floral garlands fling;
The azalia to the ruined oak shall cling,

And round each charred trunk lace a leafy vest;
The prairie fowl shall fold her dusky wing
Above her lowly, clover scented nest;

Would that my home, like hers, were in the far wild West!

Knickerbocker.

PROGRESS OF MODERN LIBERTY.

(Continued.)

THE twelfth century was also distinguished by the revival of the civil law, which, according to Mr. Justice Blackstone, 'established a new Roman empire over most of the states of the continent.' The same learned writer attributes to this cause the subsequent depression of liberty in Europe, and asserts that the preservation of the free constitution of England was owing to the resistance offered by their Anglo-Saxon laws to the repeated attacks of the Roman code. Through the introduction of the civil law, ecclesiastical influence, already much extended by the crusades, increased throughout Europe to the most dangerous ascendancy. Whatever the genius of the popish church may have been, its temporal power was always hostile to freedom. Whether the latter assertion of the distinguished commentator be or be not unqualifiedly true, certain it is, that to England we must look for the most substantial triumphs of liberty, and for the sure and steady progression of her cause.

(Our Muse is a proud limitary cherub', and will not permit us to advert to the 'Patriot Tell' who woo'd and won the free and beautiful sister spirit of his native hills. She still liveth in the romantic dells of Switzerland. Forever may her rosy smiles be reflected on the snow-capped summits of those everlasting mountains which sentinel the freedom of a brave and gallant people!)

In the earlier periods of English history, the increased perfection of law was identical with the advancement of liberty. The reign of Edward the First was an era of conspicuous improvement. This monarch confirmed and enlarged the operation of Magna Charta; he restrained popish encroachments, defined judicial jurisdiction, abolished arbitrary taxation, relinquished the royal prerogative of interference in private litigation, removed restraints upon the alienation of property, and diminished those conveyances to religious societies which threatened to concentrate all the landed influence of the kingdom in the hands of the clergy. But as nothing human is unmixed with evil, the legislation of the English

Justinian was cumbered with one counteracting error. During his reign was invented the method of creating estates-tail-an evil which at this very day weighs like an incubus on the awakening exertions of a spirit more enlightened, more anthropic than even the boasted genius of English Liberty. The fabric constructed by Edward the First remained almost untouched until the reign of the eighth Henry, when the world was again agitated by a moral convulsion more centripetal than any which preceded it.

From the period of the Crusades until the beginning of the sixteenth century, the wealth and power of the clergy had rapidly augmented, and the evil influence of the Church of Rome yawned like a frightful gulf, threatening to swallow the wholesome energies and the best institutions of civil society in its all-absorbing vortex. The wealth of the Church had increased to such exorbitancy, that the greater portion of the property in several countries had been usurped into its possession. The personal immunities of the clergy were almost unlimited, and their exemption from secular authority had not only freed themselves from all moral and external restraint, but by the correspondent extension of ecclesiastical jurisdiction they had encircled almost the whole body of the laity with a palpable subjection, as well as with the mental fetters of fear and superstition. The various devices of an universal inquisition had imposed a common slavery on the minds of men, and drained the resources of every country into the meretricious lap of the Church. Horror of spiritual censure was the great engine by which unwilling obedience was extorted. The crushing weight of such accumulated imposition had compressed the elasticity of human nature to that compass when 'reaction must commence its opposing movement. The preceding circumstances concurred to produce the motive, and the previous invention of printing, together with the complete revival of learning, and its attendant spirit of inquiry, had prepared the means of accomplishing the Reformation. This great event constituted an intellectual as well as a religious revolution, and in this respect exerted an incalculable influence upon the cause of liberty. The fountain of religion was cleansed of the grosser impurities of earthly passion and temporal interest, and the rank and poisonous evils which its corrupted current had nourished were forever eradicated from a soil no longer genial to their growth. In England, the most obvious effect of the Reformation was an entire and permanent dissolution of popish connection. The power and supremacy of the Church of Rome were effectually banished and proscribed, although a lingering influence was afterward partially exhibited.

But at this period, and subsequently, during the reigns of the Tudors and Stuarts, the royal prerogative was stretched to its utmost compass. And it was not only asserted by the will of the sovereign, but also supported and enforced by law. It reached its

most oppressive construction in the time of Queen Elizabeth, who also increased the power of the fatal Court of Star-Chamber. This wise princess rarely or never exerted this prerogative to the injury of individuals, but in doctrinal excess she carried it quite as far as her most arbitrary predecessors, and amply illustrated the timeestablished maxim, 'Nec unquam satis fida potentia ubi nimia est. Those changes in society which had prepared the way for the Reformation, at first contributed to an enlarged exercise of the royal prerogative; but the same causes eventually brought about the subsequent political revolution. The great influence which was productive of a final result so different from its intermediate effects, was the increase of intelligence and power among the Commons.

The golden age of 'the good Queen Bess' was not the age of practical freedom, for although then and ever national liberty had been the pride and boast of England, there never had been a proper understanding of the individual rights of private liberty and personal independence. The spirit of a Cade or a Tyler was generally esteemed but the 'canker of ambitious thoughts' generated in the 'filth and scum' of 'valiant beggary;' the impulse of a free bosom was but the wild flashing of rebellion, and loyalty was the only virtue. But the intellectual revolution wrought by the invention of printing, the revival of letters, and the reformation, taught man the native dignity of his character, revealed his capacities, and opened a glimmering view of the elevated destiny he was intended to accomplish.

The sceptre of prerogative which had been wielded so effectually by the bold and haughty Tudors was transmitted to the feebler Stuarts; but in the hands of the first Charles it became the leaden weight which eventually pressed down that ill-fated monarch to a bloody grave. During the precedent reign of his pusillanimous father, the abuses of the kingly power, and the extravagant assumptions of absolute authority, had excited a jealous scrutiny as to the validity of claims so unreasonable. The divine right of oppression was denied, and the usurpations of the crown resisted, with partial success, on the part of the people. The administration of Charles was fruitful in expedients to extend the royal prerogative beyond all limits; and among these the well known invention of the tax called ship-money is the most celebrated. The resistance to this imposition elevated the spirit of liberty into the dignity of a principle, and made it the rallying-point of those intrepid men, among whom the name of Hampden is immortally illustrious. The famous decision in his case precluded all further efforts to obtain protection from the laws and justice of the country; and although subsequent concessions in regard to this and other offensive measures were extorted from the vacillating king, still an irremediable impetus had been given which soon plunged the nation into