THE 'progress of society' is an expression on the lips, and traced by the pen, of every scribbler who can construct a paragraph for a newspaper. Without venturing upon the decision of the philosophical question, whether intellectual power is now more vigorous than it has been at any previous stage of the mysterious and sublime drama that has been acting, and constantly unfolding the most startling scenes, for six thousand years on this globe; whether mental cultivation has now reached an expansive liberality, and a brilliancy of polish, to which it had never before attained; it may be affirmed, that the course of society has been fearfully alternating, and that all its fluctuations have followed the direction of some leading princiciple,' an indestructible, impassable agent, instinct with life, infused through the body and limbs of society:

- Totamque infusa per artus, Mens agitat molem ;'

giving it, for the period, its distinctive features and complexion. Thus in ancient Greece, inspired by enthusiastic patriotism, society marched with triumphant step amidst its classic vales, and on the banks of its pure streams, adorned with the glory of letters, and the splendor of the arts. Again, after having been fettered through the long and dreary night that succeeded the fall of the Roman empire, she burst her bands, and emerged into the breaking light, breathing the ardor, and resplendent in the arms, of chivalry. And again, near the close of the last century, in France, throwing the reins upon the neck of licentious Skepticism, she plunged into the depths of destructive anarchy; exhibiting a gloomy spectacle outstretched beneath the eye of indignant heaven:

'Like the old ruins of a broken tower.'

For the last half century, this 'leading principle' has assumed so

many aspects, that it becomes difficult to sketch its portrait. It has seized, with convulsive energy, the spirit of controversy. It boldly discusses all questions of moral science, and political policy, frequently supplying its deficiency of arguments, by arrogant assumption and declamation. It has done, and does still, its utmost to blunt our perceptions of prescriptive right, and stifle all reverence for antiquity. It strips off the venerable encrustations of age from institutions which have commanded the sacred respect of mankind for centuries, and claims to reform them by breaking them into fragments, and attempting to reconstruct the edifice out of its defaced materials; not remembering, that the violence of its touch rends asunder the golden chain of past and present associations, that strongest bond by which legislators can secure the consistency of their fabrics.

They who devote their energies to the pursuits of literature, whose mental eye is directed long and keenly into books, where they can survey the race-ground on which departed genius has run the course of immortality, and watch its eagle flights, and who thus acquire a sort of veneration for whatever is allied to the departed beings with whom they hold communion, naturally feel an inward grief, when compelled to mark the destruction of ties they have long cherished. And perhaps they have too often, for this reason, withdrawn their mild but powerful influence from the turmoil of political struggles, retired into secluded retreats, and poured out their feelings in strains of pure and thrilling pathos. But when we reflect that the direction of this principle is but rarely yielded to the impulses of vice, and that it often lends virtue overmastering energies, the friend of humanity has but little to fear, and much to hope, from its influence.

It has no where left deeper impressions than upon political subjects; and although here, as elsewhere, it has clothed sophistry with a glare which is often mistaken for the sweet light of heaven, it has given TRUTH a keener edge, and made her panoply gleam with a purer and more attractive splendor. Under its influence, the field of political disquisition grows broader with the diffusion of intelligence, and its limits vanish as we attempt to approach them, as the apparently descending canopy of the skies lifts away before the march of the traveller. Politics is a science founded on clear and easily-defined general principles; the indestructible relations of moral right; but the edifice that has been reared upon this basis, is composed of a variety of costly materials, and embellished with sumptuous ornaments. Constitutional law is the strength of its wall. The flashing rays of genius, elicited in the halls of legislation, gild its columns, and beam from its towers. Even literature hath wreathed beautiful chaplets around the capitals and architraves of its pillars. In fact it often does more; not merely imparting to political institutions the beauty of intellectual elegance, but rendering services which are justly deemed indispensable. There are illustrious instances in which it has formed a bond of union of sufficient strength to resist the discordant jars and strifes of local interests, throughout a great nation. Among these, there is one so striking and noble in its character, that it supersedes the necessity of introducing others which might be cited. I refer to the influence of the Iliad of Homer, a work of pure literature, on the States of ancient Greece.

The Iliad of Homer is one of the most remarkable productions of the human mind. Although conceived in the youth of the Grecian nation, when history was so young as to be almost entirely embraced in oral traditions, before manners had become softened by the refinements of civilization; and while the armor of savage warfare was yet glittering in the limbs of HEROES; it displays an insight into the recesses of the human heart, so deep and clear; so intimate a knowledge of the vibrations of all the cords of sympathy; an acquaintance with the secret springs of action so profound and accurate; that succeeding writers, for nearly three thousand years, have done little else than new-name his characters, transpose his incidents, and manufacture new draperies for his sentiments.

In its style, it combines all the graces that adorn the works of the age of Pericles, with the guileless simplicity that belongs to the first essays in composition. It flows from the lips of the poet like a river; in one part of its course sweeping majestically through rich vales, and in others plunging with awful sublimity over rugged precipices, always grand and impressive as the courses of nature.

This production, which for at least two centuries was not collected into a volume, but sung in detached portions by wandering minstrels, deeply engaged the attention of the Peisistratida, the immediate successors of Solon in the administration of the government of Athens; who, with rare genius and keen foresight, attempted to fortify the wise legislation of their great predecessor, by endeavoring to make the Greeks breathe the inspiration of this noble poem. With immense labor, they collected and collated its scattered fragments, and restored the unity breathed into it by the genius who gave it birth. Legal enactments required it to be read and studied by every citizen of the republic, and recitation of its sublime passages formed an important part of their entertainments, at all public games and festivals. Embodying the principles that directed the chisel of the sculptor, and the painter's pencil, as well as of the eloquence that uttered its thunders in the forum, and above all, furnishing the universal minstrelsy of the people, it inspired their genius, refined their taste, and gave them a keen relish for beauty and elegance, without impairing their manly vigor. It was a mirror that reflected the traits of heroes, from whom in direct line they traced their descent, and through them by only a few anterior steps to the fabled deities of heaven. Under its influence, Greece became the birthplace of the arts, the paradise of the sciences, the nurse of heroic and manly sentiment, which is 'that cheap defence of nations, that unbought grace of life,' which, in its healthy state, 'feels a stain like a wound; which ennobles whatever it touches; and under which vice itself loses half its evil, by losing all its grossness.'

So invincible was the shield in which the heart of the Grecian nation was encased by the spirit of this poem, that the portentous clouds of Persian weapons which were said to have shrouded the sun in gloom, vanished before the Persians' victorious swords, like the exhalations of the morning before the rising sun. They drove back the invaders, routed, soiled, and humiliated, and the fire of liberty burned with purer flame in their hearts and on their altars, than before this attempt to extinguish it. The plains of Marathon and the

Pass of Thermopyla are eternal monuments, not of Grecian valor only, but also of the invincible strength of patriotism, when kindled at the shrine of the muses.

As poetry is peculiarly the language of sentiment and passion, its political influence must, in a great measure, be limited to that stage in the progress of society, where civil institutions are rather the offspring of impulsive feelings, than the emanations of unimpassioned reason. She utters her voice in the silent haunts of retirement, and is often most prodigal of her inspiration, to those whose golden hopes have been reaped down by the sickle of adversity. They who have advanced farthest into the chambers of Imagery, where she holds her court, have often been enabled to gaze undazzled on her glowing visions, and to convey them in their integrity to the minds of others, by the very misfortunes that have dried up the fountains of their sympathies with their fellows. Though the voice of poetry be full of melodious harmony, yet the din of this every-day working world forces its influence back into the silence of the closet where it received its birth. In proportion as the ardor of passion is assuaged by the calm voice of reason, in building the frame-work of society, poetry is compelled to resign her command of the public ear, to the counsels of a bolder and less sensitive spirit, viz. ELOQUENCE, which animates a department of literature, that if measured by the power which it evinces in wielding the destinies of men, will not yield to poetry, and is much more intimately interwoven into the tissue of politics, than poetry, from its nature, can ever be.

The action of eloquence is never so vigorous, nor are her tones so commanding, as when civil liberty calls in her aid to resist the encroachments of tyranny. She gathers strength from obstacles, and all attempts to stifle her voice, give addition to its impressive energy. The history of ancient and modern free states furnish noble examples of her triumphs. To return to the land of the Iliad. As the waves of foreign war subsided, and the beams of peace returned, the energies that, concentrated, had raised a wall of fire around this glorious nation, were divided by the jealousies that must distract every state, which has a diversity of local interests, uncemented by the charm of an indissoluble union. Whatever dissolves the charm, awakens the demons of faction. Discussions become bold and free. Schemes are set on foot, and theories broached and advocated by intellects which ambition has sharpened to keenness. The field is now clear for eloquence. The insidious and overreaching policy of Philip of Macedon kindled the great heart of Demosthenes, and sinking the name of 'party' in the solemn and venerable name of patriotism, his political views acquired a princely dignity by the invincible eloquence with which he enforced them. Those orations, whose bold truths, thrilling appeals, and indignant, sarcastic wit electrified the men of Athens, are the fountains whence succeeding rhetoricians have drawn the rules and principles of that sublime science, which embraces in itself a knowledge of all the others.

The Romans were less poetical, and more imitative, than the Greeks, but their orators were scarcely less illustrious. Their stately annals gleam with the light which flashed from the ardent souls of

the Gracchi. The darkest and most corrupt days of the republic had Cato and Cicero, who threw a splendor around them, that made the darkness odious, by rendering it visible. But none of these great men, and especially Cicero, ever reached the full height of their intellectual stature, except when, on the political arena, they appeared as the indomitable champions of the crumbling commonwealth. Their almost superhuman exertions in the cause of patriotism, have proIcured for themselves a fame which has survived the wreck of the republic, at the same time that they lent a surpassing interest to every thing Roman. The orations of Cicero are not merely beautiful specimens of rhetorical skill, but they are the most valuable commentaries on the Roman Commonwealth extant. The exquisite finish of the style, and the glowing fire of genius which burns beneath every period, give them not only a high rank in classical literature, but render them the most acceptable text-book that can be placed in the hands of the young scholar. The noble and patriotic sentiments of the old Roman are thus interwoven into the texture of the ideas, and become a component part of the intellectual nature, when it is most susceptible of deep impressions, and exert a strong influence in casting the mould of thought, even after the original impressions may have been partially effaced. The lifeless corpse of the republic has thus been embalmed in the uncorrupting fragrance of genius, and though

'The Scipios' tomb contains no ashes now,'

the features of Rome's great men are engraven on tablets of everlasting duration.

But the triumphs of eloquence are not confined to Greece or Rome. The scroll of English prose literature can unrol but few pages of equal beauty with those which record the intellectual struggles of Chatham, Pitt, Fox, Burke, Sheridan, Wyndham, and others, in the British Senate; and decidedly the most attractive and eloquent passages, the finest specimens of profound thought and exquisite elegance of diction, in the whole range of American literature, are found in the political speeches and treatises of our Henry, Hamilton, Jay, Marshall, Fisher Ames, Clay, Randolph, and Webster. Many of the orations of these mighty geniuses, especially those of Chatham, Burke, Fisher Ames, and Webster, offspring as they are of questions that arise out of the depths of political science, contain choice touches of sentiment, thrilling appeals to the most generous passions of human nature, fine imagery, and graphic descriptions; thus cementing together the different parts of their discourses by golden links, that add strength to the work, while they give the finishing touch to the most costly embellishments.

The alliance that subsists between poetry, eloquence, and politics, it is true, is rather incidental than direct; but there is another department of literature, whose range is very extensive, and is daily becoming more so, which exerts a political influence that is incalculable. I refer to periodical criticism. Magazines, originally established as an ordeal through which works offered to the favor of the public must pass, be subjected to a rigid analysis, and be tested by the application of the rules of just criticism, are now the charts