utter the sentiments, which society inspires. They do not create, they obey the Spirit of the Age; the serene and beautiful spirit descended from the highest heaven of liberty, who laughs at our little preconceptions, and, with the breath of his mouth, sweeps before him the men and the nations, that cross his path. By an unconscious instinct, the mind in the strong action of its powers, adapts itself to the number and complexion of the other minds, with which it is to enter into communion or conflict. As the voice falls into the key, which is suited to the space to be filled, the mind, in the various exercises of its creative faculties, strives with curious search for that master-note, which will awaken a vibration from the surrounding community, and which, if it do not find, it is itself too often struck dumb.

For this reason, from the moment in the destiny of nations, that they descend from their culminating point and begin to decline, from that moment the voice of creative genius is hushed. and at best, the age of criticism, learning and imitation, succeeds. When Greece ceased to be independent, the forum and the stage became mute. The patronage of Macedonian, Alexandrian and Pergamean princes was lavished in vain. They could not woo the healthy muses of Hellas, from the cold mountain tops of Greece, to dwell in their gilded halls. Nay, though the fall of greatness, the decay of beauty, the waste of strength, and the wreck of power, have ever been among the favorite themes of the pensive muse, yet not a poet arose in Greece to chant her own elegy; and it is after near three centuries, and from Cicero and Sulpicius, that we catch the first notes of pious and pathetic lamentation over the fallen land of the arts. The freedom and genius of a country are invariably gathered into a common tomb, and there

Can only strangers breathe
The name of that which was beneath.

It is when we reflect on this power of an auspicious future, that we realize the prospect, which smiles upon the intellect of America. It may justly be accounted the great peculiarity of ancient days, compared with modern, that in antiquity there was, upon the whole, but one civilized and literary nation at a time in the world. Art and refinement followed in the train of political ascendency, from the east to Greece and from Greece to Rome. In the modern world, under the influence of various causes, intellectual, political and moral, civilization has been diffused throughout the greater part of Europe and America. Now mark a singular fatality as regards the connexion of this enlarged and diffused civilization, with the progress of letters and the excitement to intellectual exertion in any given state. Instead of one sole country, as in antiquity, where the arts and refinements find a home, there are, in modern Europe, seven or eight equally entitled to the general name of cultivated nations, and in each of which some minds of the first order have appeared. And yet, by the unfortunate multiplication of languages, an obstacle all but insuperable has been thrown in the way of the free progress of genius, in its triumphant course, from region to region. The muses of Shakspeare and Milton, of Camoens, of Lope de Vega, and Calderon, of Corneille and Racine, of Dante and Tasso, of Goethe and Schiller, are strangers to each other.

This evil was so keenly felt in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, that the Latin language was widely adopted as a dialect common to scholars. We sec men like Luther, Calvin and Erasmus, Bacon, Grotius and Thuanus, who could scarce have written a line without exciting the admiration of their contemporaries, driven to the use of a tongue, which none but the learned could understand. For the sake of addressing the scholars of other countries, these great men, and others like them, in many of their writings, were obliged to cut themselves off, from all sympathy with the

mass of those, whom as patriots they must have wished most to instruct. In works of pure science and learned criticism, this is of less consequence; for being independent of sentiment, it matters less how remote from real life the symbols, in which their ideas are conveyed. But when we see a writer like Milton, who, more than any other, whom England ever produced, was a master of the music of his native tongue, who, besides all the eloquence of thought and imagery, knew better than any other man how to clothe them, according to his own beautiful expression,

In notes, with many a winding bout
Of linked sweetness, long drawn out,
With wanton heed and giddy cunning,
The melting voice through mazes running,
Untwisting all the chains that tie

The hidden soul of harmony;

when we see a master of English eloquence thus gifted choosing a dead language, the dialect of the closet, a tongue without an echo from the hearts of the people, as the vehicle of his defence of that people's rights; asserting the cause of Englishmen in the language, as it may be truly called, of Cicero; we can only measure the incongruity, by reflecting what Cicero would himself have thought and felt, if called to defend the cause of Roman freedom, not in the language of the Roman citizen, but in that of the Chaldeans or Assyrians, or some people still farther remote in the history of the world. There is little doubt that the prevalence of the Latin language among modern scholars, was a great cause not only of the slow progress of letters among the lower ranks, but of the stiffness and constraint formerly visible in the vernacular style of most scholars themselves. That the reformation in religion advanced with such rapidity, is doubtless, in no small degree, to be attributed to the translation of the scriptures, and the use of liturgies in the modern tongues. While the preservation in England of a strange language-I

will not sin against the majesty of Rome by calling it Latin-in legal acts, down to so late a period as 1730, may be one cause, that the practical forms of administering justice have not been made to keep pace with the popular views, that have triumphed in other things. With the erection of popular institutions under Cremwell, among various other legal improvements,* very many of which were speedily adopted by our plain dealing forefathers, the records of the law were ordered to be kept in English; A novelty,' says the learned commentator on the English laws, which at the restoration was no longer continued, practisers having found it very difficult to express themselves so concisely or significantly in any other language but Latin;' an argument for the use of that language, whose soundness it must be left to clients to estimate.

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Nor are the other remedies more efficacious, which have been attempted for the evil of a multiplicity of tongues. Something is done by translations and something by the acquisition of foreign languages. But that no effectual transfusion of the higher literature of a country can take place, in the way of translation, is matter of notoriety; and it is a remark of one of the few, who could have courage to make such a remark, Madame de Stael, that it is impossible fully to comprehend the literature of a foreign tongue. The general preference given to Young's Night Thoughts and Ossian, over all the other English poets, in many parts of the continent of Europe, seems to confirm the justice of the observation. There is, indeed, an influence of exalted genius coextensive with the earth. Something of its power will be felt, in spite of the obstacles of different languages, remote regions, and other times. But its true empire, its lawful sway, are at home and over the hearts of kindred men. A charm, which nothing can

*See a number of them in Lord Somers' Tracts, vol. i. † Blackstone's Commentaries, vol. iii. 422.

borrow, nothing counterfeit, nothing dispense with, resides in the simple sound of our mother tongue. Not analyzed, nor reasoned upon, it unites the earliest associations of life with the maturest conceptions of the understanding. The heart is willing to open all its avenues to the language, in which its infantile caprices were soothed; and by the curious efficacy of the principal association, it is this echo from the feeble dawn of life, which gives to eloquence much of its manly power, and to poetry much of its divine charm. This feeling of the music of our native language is the first intellectual capacity that is developed in children, and when by age or misfortune,

The ear is all unstrung,

Still, still, it loves the lowland tongue.'

What a noble prospect is opened in this connexion for the circulation of thought and sentiment in our country! Instead of that multiplicity of dialect, by which mental communication and sympathy are cut off in the old world, a continually expanding realm is opened and opening to American intellect, in the community of our language, throughout the wide spread settlements of this continent. The enginery of the press will here, for the first time, be brought to bear, with all its mighty power, on the minds and hearts of men, in exchanging intelligence, and circulating opinions, unchecked by the diversity of language, over an empire more extensive than the whole of Europe.

And this community of language, all important as it is, is but a part of the manifold brotherhood, which unites and will unite the growing millions of America. In Europe, the work of international alienation, which begins in diversity of language, is carried on and consummated by diversity of government, institutions, national descent, and national prejudices. In crossing the principal rivers, channels and mountains, in that quarter of the world, you are met, not only by new