They are a part of his very nature. No state of society can be perfect without them. A state of society entirely without them is very far from perfect, all that the love of Do-nothingism, or the adoration of the clink of the Omnipotent Dollar may say to the contrary notwithstanding. Pericles, Maecenas, and Cosmo de Medici were

part also of the whole man? Have they, any of things are a part of the inevitable history of man. them, any apparatus for the education of that part of the whole man? Can they hold out the promise of readiness to educate the whole man while they have no such apparatus? Who but God made the souls of the Artists, who poured Beauty and Grandeur in such munificence and magnificence upon the Acropolis at Athens? Who else gave to Florence and to all succeeding not fools. They were not base, narrow spirits. ages, the soul of Michael Angelo, yearning after, The world is not, this day, the worse that they and creating all artistic beauty that man's soul have lived in and adorned it. There are feelcan know? Who made the souls of all those who ings over which art can exert a most potent inmade "the fairy halls" of the Etrurian Athens ? fluence for good. Nothing else can exert that Who gave the souls of those who have made influence. The want of it, in the absence of even modern Rome "the City of the Soul"? art, must and does leave a drooping and defiAnd who indeed but that God whom she has cient character, individually and socially. On sometimes declared to be a non-entity, kindled what just grounds could it be thought, by the the taste and spirit which decorate (partly with coldest, hardest mind among us, that an Acadeher own genius and partly by plunder) even that my of Music, Painting, Sculpture and Architectigress courtezan of cities, modern Paris? Why ture would be nonsense to-day, in Virginia or then is this God-given impulse to be totally omit-any other of our States?

ted in our boasted systems of education for the But it may be said that Art wedded itself to whole man? How can American education make the superstitions of a corrupt religion in mediepretensions to completeness while there is such val Europe, so that art had to be destroyed bea biatus in it? There is hardly an educational fore superstition itself could be destroyed; that instrumentality for that end, and for the male art has always been the nursing mother of susex, in our state. There is probably none of perstition; that the spiritual heroes of the sixmuch account in the United States. Unless in-teenth century found that the only way to oust deed perspiration over Homer and Virgil; the the rooks was to pull down the rookeries. This stealthy and snatched perusal of Shakspeare, may all be true. Perhaps it is. We will not Byron, and Bulwer; the shilly-shally looking at defend Art at the expense of truth, freedom, or pictures in rotundas, society-halls, or costly or social purity. But the mischief complained of, nithological toy-books, can be regarded as such sprung not from art itself; but from the wedlock an instrumentality. It may be replied that there of art and superstition. That this is not a neis hardly such an instrumentality in connection cessary union, that pure religion and art can cowith a College or University in the world any exist with mutual honor and advantage, that the where. Be it so. In old countries there are very purest spirit of religion is consistent with associations of individuals and families with the very noblest love of Beauty, the name of their native places, for time to which neither the MILTON alone will sufficiently attest. The union memory nor the records of man run back. There of the church and the state produced very great is history, deep enchanting antiquity; and there evils at the very same time when these evils of are galleries, cathedrals, courts, piazzas, rich art blended with superstition were felt. It is just with the mature collected fruits of art for many as logical and as wise, to say that there ought to ages, which serve as both nurseries and refecto-be no church at all, or no state at all, because ries for the Love of the Beautiful. Even if these these two, in unlawful wedlock, produced monthings were not so, Europe is no model for us. strous evils, as to say that there ought to be no The bonds of local attachment are bursting upon art, because art blended with religion, produced her shores. The "disjecta membra" are thick monstrous superstitions. The simple answer is: on our shores. In new States, where social life let us have the church and the state, but not uniis yet too recent and too raw for the deeper ted;-let us have the religion and the art, but not charms of the historic and poetic muses, where united; let us have the pure high art of an enroving locomotion and small attachment to house-lightened age, and not the sickly and corrupt art hold gods is too much a peculiarity of the citi- of the dark ages. We can surely at length learn zens, where the "restlessness and wild endea- that the abuse of things, if not necessarily incivour" of man's heart needs the oil of this sort dent to their use, is no just ground of their imof consecration, such instrumentalities are more peachment.

needed than in other States, and must prob- There is an incessant, and probably increasably depend more upon a connection with in- ing influx of European literature upon us. It stitutions of learning for their existence. These comes preaching daily to open ears, things that

VOL. XV-79

"The mountain's giant crags that prop the sky
Are hurled asunder; and the brazen steed

befit us about as well as the armour and battle- that Doubting Castle of which we have a masaxe of Richard Coeur-de-Leon would have suit-ter-key and free egress, as soon as we awake to ed Captain Walker or Pierce Butler in the Mex- the consciousness that we have them. We can ican War-toryism, feudalism, medievalism, all dig canals, build rail-roads, stretch out speaking manners of retrogradism and rottenness in opin-wires, erect lunatic, orphan, deaf, dumb and bliad ion, all manners and moods of contempt for our- asylums: selves and for each other, all variations of desire for false and ruinous conservatism. We calmly acquiesce in such a state of literary dependence The fiery rail-car sweeps exulting by. as would become only an infant or subject posi- The word goes forth, and dreary fens are dry tion. We must pass beyond the Atlantic wave Wide blooms the arid desert as the rose; to find gratification for some of the noblest and The frowning forest lifts its boughs on high The advancing giant's footsteps to oppose strongest of our natural aspirations. Even our And strives, but strives in vain, and sinks before its foes." own authors must often seek foreign scenes, and personages, to bring naturally into their works Whenever we shall see then, the clear absothat brightness and glory of art which is, at the lute necessity of providing for the nobler and yet same time, the very vital warmth of polite let- unsupplied wants of coming generations, there ters. To us the rule of the sage does not apply, will not be a want of ability. Possent quia se as it does to nations in which the arts are culti-posse putant. Having done so much to connect vated, that that most interests us which comes city with city in commerce, to sweep over and home to "our business and our bosoms." We laugh at distance in the flight of news, we can, have a singular amaurosis hiding from us only when we shall become aware that we can, do things at hand. Yet we have a noble continent much to ennoble man's imagination and bind him where nature has wrought no "journey-work to the homes and graves of his fathers. Without with prenticed hand;" we have glorious skies this, civilization must ever be imperfect. Such -forests-rivers-cataracts-lakes-savannahs. is the law under which man is created. He who We have unfettered limbs, unfettered minds, an made him and kindled within him the love of the unfettered faith. These all have their own de- beautiful, the pure and the sublime, made also partments in our nature; and most nobly, or it is the natural objects in the world around, which our own fault, may those departments be filled. evoke and gratify those feelings. As man hunYet we ourselves prove to ourselves by the books gers and thirsts, the munificence of the planetand journals we most read, that there is yet ano- home to which he is now bound, gives food and ther department which none nor all of these can drink; and thereby shows that it is now bis apfill. We still pine for Parthenon, and Coliseum, propriate and adapted home. As his spirit also and dome, and statue, and glorious visions on hungers and thirsts, both for higher things, and Italian walls. Our longings for heroes. orators for the grand, the sublime and the beautiful, so and sages are more than satisfied with the memo- also the munificence of his home provides the ries of Washington, of Franklin, of Henry, of thousand-fold grandeurs of sky and cloud, and Marshall and their like. We have had the he- the earthly beauties of spring and summer, and roes. We pine for the Beautifiers of life. We the thunder and the cataract and the roar of the have been freed from the wounding chains of ocean, and thereby proves itself adapted to, and civil oppression; but we stretch out our hands not contemptuous of, the wants even of his imafter the silken cords of captivity to the enno- agination. That only is a complete civilization bling, the exalting, the gladdening influences of social life. Where are our Phidias, our Zeuxis, our Raffaelle, our Michael Angelo? We wait for them.

Many persons consider all this to be mere romance, because it will not tell in the ledger or the purse. It is a sailing through the sky in chase of some impalpable charm; a vain pining after an impracticable El Dorado of sentiment. With them, man is merely a being who eats bread, wears clothes, and casts up accounts. We desire no argument with any of that family. But a respectful word or two about practicability. "No prophet is so infallible as he who fulfills his own predictions." No dungeon is deeper, no doors made faster, than the dungeon and the doors of

which patterns in this respect after nature and the Author of Nature; which in its schemes for the education of the whole man, embraces intellect, conscience, passions, emotions, reverence. love of beauty, love of pure, high, ennobling nature, and pure, high, ennobling art.

B.

COLERIDGE'S ESTIMATE OF THE FRENCH.

Frenchmen are like grains of gunpowder,— each by itself smutty and contemptible, but mase them together and they are terrible indeed.

Among her Great of old!

He is thy son: from thee he drew

The blood that like sheet-lightning flew
Through all the cloudy past-
The mighty blood that Vikings gave
Like water to the Northern wave,
While shouting through their beards a stave
Of triumph on the blast.

Yes, Mother of the Nations! save
For him, thine own, a bloodless grave:
And, more than NELSONS, such as he
May keep thy throne upon the Sea.
Thy mighty Daughter of the West,
In Freedom's beaming mantle drest,

Shall waft the Sailor's relics home-
Her flag of stars around his breast,

Her standard on the foam!
There she will clasp thy mother's hand,
And, reverent, cry to thee,
"Place by the Howard of the Land

The Howard of the Sea !"

New York, 1848.

* JEROME has become a citizen of the United States.

Camp Life of Hon. William Wirt.

of our man Randal, came in last evening. The starving Israelites were not more gladdened by the arrival of quails and manna. than we were by the salutation of Randal. The fish would have been a superb treat, had there been such an article as a potato in this poverty-stricken land. And yet the parish, according to the old inscriptions, is called 'Bliss-Land.'-The church was built in 1709.

The British fleet are said to have descended the bay, or to be now doing so. There was a seventy-four at the mouth of York River, day before yesterday. She weighed anchor, yesterday, and went up the bay."

September 12.

"Your kindness and thoughtfulness has filled my camp with luxury. I fear we shall have no opportunity to become memorable for any thing but our good living-for I begin to believe that the enemy will not attempt Richmond. They are said to have gone up the bay on some enterprise. If they are hardy enough to make an attempt on Baltimore, there is no knowing what they may not attempt. We are training twice a day, which does'nt well agree with our poor horses. We have a bad camping ground-on a flat We anticipate much pleasure from Kennedy's Life of which extends two miles to the river-the water William Wirt, which we understand will be before the pub- is not good and the men are sickly. I shall want lic by the time that our present number is issued. From a tent,-about which Cabell must interest himthe documents and papers of Mr. Wirt, which have been put in Mr. Kennedy's hands, we look for much that is novel self. Let the materials be good, and have it and interesting relative to this distinguished man and his made under Pryor's direction." times, personally as well as politically. We append an extract from an epistolary diary by Mr. Wirt, while serving as a Captain of Artillery, during the alarm at Richmond, in 1814.

[Ed. Mess.

We shall now find some pictures of a militia campaign, in the following extracts from a correspondence with Mrs. Wirt. The enemy had captured Washington on the 24th of August. The British fleet had descended the Potomac River, and was now in the Chesapeake Bay. Its destination remained unknown in Richmond, until the movement on Baltimore became appaThe failure on Baltimore, on the 12th and 13th of September, animated the hopes of the people living in the vicinity of the Chesapeake, and increased their confidence in their power to repel an attack on any other point. A camp was formed below Richmond, on the York River,

rent.

a battalion.

September 13.

"An express this morning tells us that five square-rigged vessels are at the mouth of York River. It is conjectured that the British fleet is coming down the bay. Their object of course, is only guess. Their position indicates equally an ascent of York or James River, or an attack on Norfolk, or a movement to sea to intercept Decatur's squadron.

September 16.

“A letter last night from Cabell, with a good tent and some clothes-for which I beg you to thank him."

September 19.

"The struggle, I now believe, will be a short one. The invincibles of Wellington, are found

at a place known as Warrenigh Church. Wirt to be vincible, and are melting away by repeated was there, a captain of artillery, in command of defeats. The strongest blows they have been striking have been aimed only at the power to These extracts supply some incidents of camp they met at Baltimore, will extinguish that lofty dictate a peace. A few more such repulses as hope, and we shall have a peace on terms honorable to us.

life.

WARRENIGH, September 9, 1814. "Your most seasonable supply, under convoy

"We have heard nothing from them since they

left Baltimore: so that they cannot be yet com- mind, in such a service, I am getting heartily ing this way, and we are at a loss to conjecture sick. what they are at.

"Our volunteers are becoming disorderly for want of an enemy to cope with. Quarrels, arrests, courts-martial, are beginning to abound. I have had several reprimands to pronounce at the head of my company, in compliance with the sentence of the courts. To one of these, James, our man, held the candle-it being dark at the time-and when I finished and turned round, the black rascal was in a broad grin of delight. I was near laughing myself at so unexpected a spectacle. My men are all anxious to return home:-constant applications for furloughs, in which Col. Randolph indulges them liberally. At present, I have not more than men enough to man two guns. One of my sergeants contributor to the Old Bachelor. He, my secdeserted this morning;-another will be put under arrest presently. So much grumbling about rations,-about the want of clothes,about their wives, their business, debts, sick children, &c., &c.,-that if I get through this campaign in good temper, I shall be proof against all the cares of a plantation, even as Cabell depicts them.

"I was never in better health, and were my men contented, I should be in high spirits. As it is, I shall bear up and discharge my duty with a steady hand.

Frank Gilmer, Jefferson Randolph, the Carrs, Upshur, and others, have got tired of waiting for the British, and gone home. David Watson is the only good fellow that remains with us. He is a major, quartered at Abner Tyne's,-messes with us,-takes six pinches of snuff to my one, which he thrusts two inches up his bellows nostrils, and smiles at the luxury of the effort. He is an excellent fellow, and has spouted almost all Shakspeare to us. You remember him as a

"I am perpetually interrupted by the complaints of my men. Yet I do well, and if they leave me men enough I shall be prepared for a fight in a few days. We expect the enemy somewhere in Virginia, to avenge their discomfiture at Baltimore."

ond captain, Lambert, and my second lieutenant, Dick, make admirable company for me."

September 28.

"The Blues at Montpelier are suffering much from sickness. Murphy, your brother John and his friend Blair are all down. The other companies are almost unofficered-the men very sickly. I strongly suspect that if we are kept much longer hovering over these marshes, our soldiers will fall like the grass that now covers them. We hope to be ordered in a few days to Richmond. It is believed on every hand that the British, with their mutinous and deserting troops, will not attempt a march on Richmond through the many defiles, swamps, thickets and forests that line the road, where, besides the "Still at Warrenigh, and less probability of abundant opportunities for desertion, nature has an enemy than ever. We are doing nothing but formed so many covers for our riflemen and indrilling, firing national salutes for recent victo- fantry. ries, listening to the everlasting and growing dis-*

September 26.

If we should be ordered to contents of the men, and trying their quarrels Richmond, I have no idea that my company will before courts-martial. I have endeavored to be discharged. It will be kept there ready to give satisfaction to my company, so far as I could march at a moment's warning." compatibly with discipline. My success, I fear, has been limited. In addition to their rations, Here ends the campaign of Captain Wirt, and which have been very good and abundant, I have with it the last of his military aspirations. This distributed to the sick, with a liberal hand, the little piece of history is a faithful transcript of comforts which your kindness had supplied. The some of the most characteristic incidents of micompany is well provided with cooking utensils, litia warfare in nearly all the service of the war yet they murmur incessantly. Such are volun- of 1812. Heer militia when taken from their homes, and "I would not," says the author of this brief put on camp duty. One source of their inquie- diary, in a subsequent letter to Mrs. W., “with ude is, that they thought they were coming my present feelings and opinions, accept of any down merely for a fight, and then to return. military commission the United States could conBeing kept on the ground, after the expectation fer. I will be a private citizen as

of a battle has vanished, and not knowing how long as I can see that, by being so, I shall be of ong they are to remain-looking every day for use towards maintaining those who are depenheir discharge-they are enduring the pain of dent upon me; holding myself ever ready for ope deferred, and manifest their disquiet in my country's call in time of need.

every form. Of such men, in such a state of "We shall soon see whether Lord Hill, who is