a neighboring nation, ere you knew your spears were in your hands.

But, as in stars you have written it on the welkin, sovereign-kings! you are a great and glorious people. And verily, yours is the best and happiest land under the sun. But not wholly, because you, in your wisdom, decreed it: your origin and geography necessitated it. Nor, in their germ, are all your blessings to be ascribed to the noble sires, who of yore fought in your behalf, sovereign-kings! Your nation enjoyed no little independence before your Declaration declared it. Your ancient pilgrims fathered your liberty; and your wild woods harbored the nursling. For the state that to-day is made up of slaves, can not to-morrow transmute her bond into free; though lawlessness may transform them into brutes. Freedom is the name for a thing that is not freedom; this, a lesson never learned in an hour or an age. By some tribes it will never be learned.

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'Yet, if it please you, there may be such a thing as being free under Cæsar. Ages ago, there were as many vital freemen, as breathe vital air to-day.

"Names make not distinctions; some despots rule without swaying sceptres. Though King Bello's palace was not put together by yoked men; your federal temple of freedom, sovereign-kings! was the handiwork of slaves.

"It is not gildings, and gold maces, and crown-jewels alone, that make a people servile. There is much bowing and cringing among you yourselves, sovereign-kings! Poverty is abased before riches, all Mardi over; any where, it is hard to be a debtor; any where, the wise will lord it over fools; every where, suffering is found.

Thus, freedom is more social than political. And its real felicity is not to be shared. That is of a man's own

individual getting and holding. It is not, who rules the state, but who rules me. Better be secure under one king, than exposed to violence from twenty millions of monarchs, though oneself be of the number.

"But superstitious notions you harbor, sovereign-kings! Did you visit Dominora, you would not be marched straight into a dungeon. And though you would behold sundry sights displeasing, you would start to inhale such liberal breezes; and hear crowds boasting of their privileges; as you, of yours. Nor has the wine of Dominora a monarchical flavor.

"Now, though far and wide, to keep equal pace with the times, great reforms of a verity, be needed; no where are bloody revolutions required. Though it be the most certain of remedies, no prudent invalid opens his veins, to let out his disease with his life. And though all evils may be assuaged; all evils can not be done away. For evil is the chronic malady of the universe; and checked in one place, breaks forth in another.

"Of late, on this head, some wild dreams have departed. "There are many, who erewhile believed that the age of pikes and javelins was passed; that after a heady and blustering youth, old Mardi was at last settling down into a serene old age; and that the Indian summer, first discovered in your land, sovereign-kings! was the hazy vapor emitted from its tranquil pipe. But it has not so proved. Mardi's peaces. are but truces. Long absent, at last the red comets have returned. And return they must, though their periods be ages. And should Mardi endure till mountain melt into mountain, and all the isles form one table-land; yet, would it but expand the old battle-plain.

"Students of history are horror-struck at the massacres of old; but in the shambles, men are being murdered to-day.

Could time be reversed, and the future change places with the past, the past would cry out against us and our future, fill as loudly, as we against the ages foregone. All the Ages are his children, calling each other names.

"Hark ye, sovereign-kings! cheer not on the yelping pack too furiously. Hunters have been torn by their hounds. Be advised; wash your hands. Hold aloof. Oro has poured out an ocean for an everlasting barrier between you and the worst folly which other republics have perpetrated. That barrier hold sacred. And swear never to cross over to Porpheero, by manifesto or army, unless you traverse dry land.

"And be not too grasping nearer home. It is not freedom to filch. Expand not your area too widely, now. Seek you proselytes? Neighboring nations may be free, without coming under your banner. . And if you can not lay your ambition, know this: that it is best served, by waiting

events.

Time, but Time only, may enable you to cross the equator; and give you the Arctic Circles for your boundaries."

When Mr. Melville has well visited and criticised Europe and America, he goes back to the metaphysical cloud-land, where he admires, without being able to inhabit the realms of Alma, and Serenia (Christ and His Kingdom.) Aylla, or Human Happiness, is lost forever: Mr. Melville is resigned to do without her.

Such is the colossal machine invented by Mr. Herman Melville. It is not unlike the gigantic American Panorama, thus advertised on the London walls.

"GIGANTIC, ORIGINAL AMERICAN PANORAMA. In the great American saloon, can be seen the prodigious moving

Panorama of the Gulf of Mexico, the Falls of St. Anthony and the Mississippi, painted by J. R. SMITH, the great Åserican artist, covering four miles of canvass, and n repres nting nearly four thousand miles of American Landscape.

MANY citizens of the United States have visited Europe and communicated their reflections to the public. Willis has given his "Pencillings by the Way;" Cooper, his "Recollections of Europe: England, Italy, Excursions in Switzerland, Residence in France, Homeward Bound;" six volumes of criticism, or rather of prejudice. We have Sanderson's "American in Paris," and "Sketches of Paris ;" J. D. Franklin's "Letters from Paris ;" C. S. Stewart's "Sketches of Society in Great Britain.”

Willis has spirit and fun, without good taste or good breeding: Cooper has bad humor changed into philosophy. The rest are not above mediocrity.

Americans have written a good deal about their own country; Cooper, whose "Democrat" greatly irritated his fellowcitizens; Channing, eloquent adversary of Slavery; George Waterton and Nicholas Biddle Van Zandt, good editors of Statistic Tables; the author of "A Voice from America," a