sagacity would select the sphere, and dictate the mode and measure of exertion. Frugality and vigilance would compel success, and defeat and ruin be felt only as the requital of illdesert; or, if such things be, as vicissitudes inflicted by Heaven among its inscrutable designs.

As

Every kind of labor being thus effectively supplied, an abundance of product would compensate its toils. At the same time, means and leisure for nobler pursuits would be provided. Prosperity admits of various employments among men, by augmenting the number and wants of a population, and, at the same time, commensurately multiplying its resources. physical comforts increase, the taste for elevated and refined enjoyment springs up. The demand for artists, poets, and philosophers expands, science becomes a distinct pursuit, literature is made profitable, and all the more delicate and ennobling modes of exerting human faculties receive invigorating rewards. Discovery and invention enlarge the scope, masterstrokes of genius stimulate the activity, lofty moral instructions refine the nature of thought. A benign influence spreads itself through public sentiment. High notions of justice soften while they give dignity to manners. Mind, warm in purposes of generosity, strong in adherence to virtue, takes the control; in short, we behold a people rich, powerful, and enlightened.

Nor less auspicious would be the adoption of the democratic idea to the elevation of individual character. In times past, the greater number of men have been nothing at all, because nothing was made of them. There was little in their circumstances to let them know that they were moral agents. All the influences around them were adapted to produce impressions directly the reverse. Living creatures they were, machines of curious workmanship, admirable as drudge-horses, effective as self-moving engines of destruction-things wherewith superior classes might pamper themselves, or ruin and destroy their adversaries; but more they were not. Neither the society of the past, nor its governments, could teach men their true nature, or inspire them with self-reliance, or cheer them with hope. Were they not the unreasoning tools of power?-were they not curs to be cuffed at will?-chips to be hurled about at caprice? Well might they have said to their heartless oppressors, We have obeyed like cowering slaves, we have toiled until blood has stood upon our limbs as sweat, we have drained the dregs of life's bitterest cup, for your gratification; and what have you given us in return?

But matters have since advanced. The grinding foot of oppression has been raised, if not removed. Better notions have grown up in the hearts of men; but alas! how much is there to stifle and impede full growth. A hateful despotism still too often actuates human will; the spirit of exclusion, of scorn, of tyranny, of selfishness, still lingers about the high places, and makes itself felt in the depths of society. Nothing short of the full recognition of the principles of democracy can regenerate man. There must be something in his circumstances to remind him of his inherent worth; something that, amid withering and depressing care, will ever bring back the fresh consciousness of his manhood. How can he, whose life is perpetual toil, whose only exercise of conscience and free-will is in the stern struggle for subsistence-how can he attain a true insight of his immortal value? Some virtue, it is true, is found in the least favored conditions. There is room enough in the lowest walks for the sweet play of affection. There are everywhere friends to be esteemed, kindred to cherish, or a wife and children to love. There are endurance and energy imparted everywhere by the discipline of life; but how little is all this compared with the perfect stature of a man. No! let it be understood that the same nature is common to men; that they have equal and sacred claims; that they have high and holy faculties; that society respects, and the whole force of government is pledged to protect their rights; and then will they acquire some adequate notion of who and what they are. A feeling of exaltation and nobleness would pass into their souls, and the humblest person would expand with a sense of innate dignity-a sense that would raise him above the dusty, beaten paths of life, give a respite to depressing care, strengthen self-respect, infuse warm and liberal emotions, quicken the best sympathies, and lend animation and support to the noblest powers. He would feel at once that he was man, known and honored as such, of higher importance and more inestimable worth than the whole outward world. In this ennobling influence, Christianity and democracy are one. What, indeed, is democracy but Christianity in its earthly aspect-Christianity made effective among the political relations of men? Christianity, in which it accords with every design of Providence, begins with individual man, addressing its lofty persuasions to him, and makes his full development its chief solicitude and care. The obstacles reared by artificial life it throws aside; the rubbish heaped by centuries of abuse upon the human

spirit it removes, the better to unfold man's inward beauty, and bring forth man's inward might. The proudest thrones may crumble, the broadest empires contract and become nothing, but the spirit of the humblest man can never perish; for it is the germ of an immortal, ever-expanding, ever-quickening existence.

A Third Gallery of Portraits. By George Gilfillan. New-York: Sheldon, Lamport & Blakeman. 1855.

We have some how got an idea into our heads, that we should put the title Rev. before the name of the very vigorous author of these lingual portraitures. We suspect Mr. Gilfillan of being a pastor of some religious denomination; but, at any rate, by the help of his glowing genius and ever-busy pen, he has erected for himself a pulpit more lofty, a congregation more extensive and intellectual, than has fallen to the lot of any practical parson within the hemisphere of our acquaintance. The portraits in this volume are not mere mechanical similitudes of the various and conflicting characters which, in turn, claim the attention of the essayist. He has imbued them all with his own superabundant vitality; and however wrong he may be-however much he may exaggerate the foibles of an enemy into glaring faults, or soften down the guilty actions of a friend into the mere aberrations of genius-we, at least, are never bored with a monotonous rehearsal of common-place; we never fall asleep while we watch the as yet undeveloped likeness leap into light and life beneath the artist's hands. Gilfillan is a passionate and rapid writer; his quick and impetuous thought has moulded for itself an utterance of language more vigorous, more terse and emphatic, than any man of less genius would be able to handle or control. His words, in their accumulative and fiery flow, seem to feel no rein, nor to acknowledge any rider; but, if we forget the superficial heedlessness, and examine only the true worth of the various judgments upon men and things contained in the book before us, we shall find, to our astonishment, that the rapidity and carelessness belong to the expression only; while the sense with which each paragraph is pregnant has in it all the ripeness and maturity of a longweighed and firmly-settled conviction.

The review of Edgar Poe is an illustrious tribute to the genius of the most illustrious-the most unfortunate of all our literary men. Unfortunate, indeed! not only in his life, but in that immortal part of him which has yet survived the attack of the envious and malignant editors to whose care, with his dying breath, he confided his scattered gems. Mr.

Gilfillan's view of Poe's private life is false as the blackest and most cowardly calumny can make it; but that calumny, that falsehood, belong not unto him. Let them be laid, where they belong, at the door of that treacherous friend, who has blackened Poe's monument with a thousand crimes, and all to throw out into bolder contrast the virtues and the generosity which he does not scruple to ascribe to himself at the cost and to the ruin of him whose tomb he desecrates.

But we have not space for such a notice of this "Gallery" as its merits strongly urge that it should have. We must, therefore, content ourselves by quoting, as concisely as we can, its various headings and contents. First, we have a file of French revolutionists, comprising Mirabeau, Marat, Robespierre, Danton, Vergniaud, and Napoleon. After this stormy group, a constellation of sacred authors-Edward Irving, Isaac Taylor, Robert Hall, and Dr. Chalmers-look mildly out upon us, and seem to plead for holier thoughts and gentler teachings to humanity. Next, we have a cluster of new poets Sydney Yendys, Alexander Smith, J. Stanyan Bigg, and Gerald Massey; whether all these are but passing meteors or bright particular stars, will be found candidly and kindly and most genially discussed in the essays and copious extracts devoted to each aspirant for the sacred bays. Having disposed of those inoffensible animals-the minstrels-the critic next essays his undaunted pen upon those great modern critics whose very names are a terror to authors of less hardy nerves; he has chapters upon Hazlitt and Hallam, Jeffrey, Coleridge, and Delta, Thomas Babington Macaulay, and last (by no means least) upon the well-beloved and frequently re-read Thackeray. Whatever awe these names may convey to common men, they have none for the robust Gilfillan; he paragraphs and alliterates and passes judgment on their various claims to leadership-still preserving a due courtesy for their high place-as coolly as though he were dissecting some poor devil who possessed no organ through which to thunder back a reply. Lastly, we have miscellaneous sketches of Carlyle and Sterling, Emerson, Neale, and Bunyan, Edmund Burke, Edgar A. Poe, Sir Edward Bulwer Lytton, Benjamin Disraeli, Professor Wilson, Henry Rogers, Eschylus-the whole concluding with a masterly and analytical dissertation upon the plays and poems of sweet William Shakespeare.

If our readers can not find in this extended catalogue much to amuse, instruct, and better them; much to make them smile, and much to arouse that nobler and more human emotion whose symbol is a tear, then we can only recommend them to look out for such books as they require themselves; for we can find no recent issue of the American press which, for so many reasons and so strongly, we can recommend. This book is, of course, a reprint from the English edition; and its typography and style will compare not unfavorably with the original. Messrs. Sheldon & Co., it is but justice to add, did not avail themselves of that privilege of literary piracy to which we owe the present agitation for the establishment of an International