tion. His own end approached, and perhaps | was accelerated by this weight of blended public and private cares. In the summer of 1843 he attended the President on a visit to Boston, to assist in the celebration of the completion of the monument on Bunker Hill. He arrived in that city on the sixteenth of June, was seized with a painful and dangerous illness the same evening, and on the morning of the twentieth breathed his last, at the house of his old classmate and steadfast friend, Mr. George Ticknor.

In 1846 a collection of the writings of Mr. Legaré was published in two large and closely printed octavo volumes, in Charleston. It consists of a Diary kept at Brussels, a Journal on the Rhine, Extracts from his Private and Diplomatic Correspondence, Orations and Speeches, and Contributions to the New York and Southern Reviews, prefaced by a memoir of his life. The collection of his previously published writings is incomplete, but the selection in the main is judicious. The private letters which are here given us are generally interesting, but they are not in all cases such as his more discreet friends cared to see in print. The diaries which he kept while abroad were evidently designed exclusively for the amusement of himself and his intimate associates, and nothing can justify their publication, at least during the lives of many of the persons mentioned in them. In the "Diary of Brussels" he himself remarks of something of the same sort, that "these attacks on ladies, and trespasses on the sanctity of private life, appeared to" him "quite shocking." This sentence should have been a warning to his literary executors.

The impression left by his collected writings is, that his mind was of the first order, but that it did not hold in that order a very prominent place. He had that rectitude of judgment, that pervading good sense, that constant natural sympathy with truth, which is a characteristic of the best class of intellects, but he was wanting in richness, fervour, and creative vigour. He possessed the forms of fine understanding, but the force of intellectual passion, or the fire of genius, are not found. His perception of truth was superior to his power of illustrating it. We follow the difficult and somewhat languid processes of his thoughts, and, surprised at last at finding him in possession of such admirable opinions on

all subjects, we imagine that he must have discovered his conclusions by different faculties from those which he uses to demonstrate them. That splendid fusion of reason, imagination, and feeling, which constitutes the inspiration of the great, is not visible: the display is meagre, laborious, and painful. He fills the measure of his subject, but it is by the utmost stretch of his abilities: we do not observe the abounding power, the exuberant resources, the superfluous energy, which mark the foremost of the first.

In his own profession Mr. Legaré had, with many, discredited his reputation by the devotion which he avowed to the civil law. It is understood that no one who has been able thoroughly to master and comprehend the common law, is disposed to give much time to the civilians. I am inclined to believe that no man ever yet took up the Code, because having sounded the common law through its depths, he had found it wanting: many have cheaply sought the praise of having gone through the common law, by appearing to have attained to something beyond it, upon the principle that if you "quote Lycophron, they will take it for granted that you have read Homer." In Mr. Legare's case, such suspicions are probably without justice. He was attracted to the "first collection of written reason” chiefly by the interest which the scholar feels in that majestic philosophy of morals which is the "imperium sine fine" of Rome. marks in a review of Kent's Commentaries, show that he understood what advantages the common law had attained over the civil law, as a practical system, by its constant regard for certainty, convenience, and policy. As a common lawyer Mr. Legaré was respectable; and in great cases, his elaborate style of preparation made him a formidable opponent.

His re

As a statesman I think the finest monument of his powers is his speech in Congress on the Sub-Treasury. It is formal, elementary, and scholastic, but able, and at times brilliant. His politics, as displayed in various essays and reviews, were profound and intelligent; but it always seemed as if he had settled his views of the present times upon opinions derived from history, and not that, like Machiavelli, he had informed his judgment on occurrences in history by suggestions drawn from his own observation. Still, by any method to have formed sound principles on government and

society, in the unfavourable circumstances in which he was placed, was an indication of extraordinary powers. He triumphed over disadvantages of position, connections, and party; and was among the wisest men of the south. Yet he appears, like Mr. Hamilton, and Mr. Ames, to have been of a too desponding temperament, to have magnified dangers that threatened our young energies, and to have lacked faith in our system, after it had passed some of the strongest trials to which it was reasonable to suppose it would ever be subjected.

As a classical scholar Mr. Legaré made great pretension, but there is nothing in his works to prove that he was here superior or even equal to several of his countrymen. His proficiency partook of the dryness and severity of his character. He studied rather as a grammarian than as a man of taste. He may have been accurate, but he was not elegant.

He writes often about the Greeks and Latins, but he had never caught the spirit and sentiment of classical enthusiasm. We miss the fine felicity of illustration, the apt quotation, the brilliant allusion, which are so attractive in the writings of one whose heart and fancy have dwelt familiarly in the clime of antiquity. He is not betrayed as a visitor to the halls of the past by the smell of aloes and cassia hanging about his garments, caught from the ivory palaces whereby they have made him glad. We know the fact by his constantly informing us of it, and because he describes the localities with the precision of one who must have observed, chiefly for the purpose of making a report. The most striking passage in his writings on a classical subject is that relating to Catullus, in his criticism of Dunlap's History of Ancient Literature. The remarks on that poet are original, beautiful, and undoubtedly just.

LIBERTY AND GREATNESS. FROM CHARACTERISTICS OF THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION.

THE name of REPUBLIC is inscribed upon the most imperishable monuments of the species, and it is probable that it will continue to be associated, as it has been in all past ages, with whatever is heroic in character, and sublime in genius, and elegant and brilliant in the cultivation of arts and letters. It would not have been difficult to prove that the base hirelings who, in this age of legitimacy and downfall, have so industriously inculcated a contrary doctrine, have been compelled to falsify history and abuse reason. I might have "called up antiquity from the old schools of Greece" to show that these apostles of despotism would have passed at Athens for barbarians and slaves. I might have asked triumphantly, what land had even been visited with the influences of liberty, that did not flourish like the spring? What people had ever worshipped at her altars, without kindling with a loftier spirit and putting forth more noble energies? Where she had ever acted, that her deeds had not been heroic? Where she had ever spoken, that her eloquence had not been triumphant and sublime? It might have been demonstrated that a state of society in which nothing is obtained by patronage-nothing is yielded to the accidents of birth and fortune-where those who are already distinguished, must exert themselves lest they be speedily eclipsed by their inferiors, and these inferiors are, by every motive, stimulated to exert themselves that they may become distinguished -and where, the lists being open to the whole world, without any partiality or exclusion, the champion who bears off the prize, must have tasked

his powers to the very uttermost, and proved himself the first of a thousand competitors-is necessarily more favourable to a bold, vigorous and manly way of thinking and acting, than any other. I should have asked with Longinus--who but a Republican could have spoken the philippics of Demosthenes? and what has the patronage of despotism ever done to be compared with the spontaneous productions of the Attic, the Roman, and the Tuscan muse?

With respect to ourselves, who have been so systematically vilified by British critics-if any answer were expected to be given to their shallow and vulgar sophistry, and there was not a sufficient practical refutation of it, in the undoubted success of some of the artists and writers that are springing up in our own times-we should be perfectly safe, in resting, upon the operation of general causes and the whole analogy of history, our anticipation of the proudest success, in all the pursuits of a high and honourable ambition. That living, as we do, in the midst of a forest, we have been principally engaged in felling and improving it; and that those arts, which suppose wealth and leisure and a crowded population, are not yet so flourishing amongst us as they will be in the course of a century or two, is so much a matter of course, that instead of exciting wonder and disgust, one is only surprised how it should even have attracted notice; but the question, whether we are destitute of genius and sensibility and loftiness of character, and all the aspirings that prompt to illustrious achievements, and all the elements of national greatness and glory, is quite a distinct thing, and we may appeal, with confidence, to what we have done and to what we are, to the Revolution we are

this day celebrating, to the career we have since run, to our recent exploits upon the flood and in the field, to the skill of our diplomacy, to the comprehensive views and undoubted abilities of our statesmen, to the virtues and prosperity of our people, to the exhibition on every occasion of all the talents called for by its exigencies and admitted by its nature; nay, to the very hatred-the vehement and irrepressible hatred, with which these revilers themselves have so abundantly honoured us-to show that nothing can be more preposterous than the contempt with which they have sometimes affected to speak of us.

And, were there no other argument, as there are many, to prove that the character of the nation is altogether worthy of its high destinies, would it not be enough to say that we live under a form of government and in a state of society to which the world has never yet exhibited a parallel? Is it then nothing to be free? How many nations, in the whole annals of human kind, have proved themselves worthy of being so? Is it nothing that we are Republicans? Were all men as enlightened, as brave, as proud as they ought to be, would they suffer themselves to be insulted with any other title? Is it nothing, that so many independent sovereignties should be held together in such a confederacy as ours? What does history teach us of the difficulty of instituting and maintaining such a polity, and of the glory that, of consequence, ought to be given to those who enjoy its advantages in so much perfection and on so grand a scale? For, can any thing be more striking and sublime, than the idea of an IMPERIAL REPUBLIC, spreading over an extent of territory, more immense than the empire of the Cæsars, in the accumulated conquests of a thousand years-without præfects or proconsuls or publicans-founded in the maxims of common sense-employing within itself no arms, but those of reason-and known to its subjects only by the blessings it bestows or perpetuates, yet capable of directing, against a foreign foe, all the energies of a military despotism-a Republic, in which men are completely insignificant, and principles and laws exercise, throughout its vast dominion, a peaceful and irresistible sway, blending in one divine harmony such various habits and conflicting opinions, and mingling in our institutions the light of philosophy with all that is dazzling in the associations of heroic achievement and extended domination, and deep-seated and formidable power!

ENGLAND AMERICA, AND THE CREDIT SYSTEM.

FROM THE SPIRIT OF THE SUB-TREASURY.

LET us look at the experience of the two other countries in which the system exists, as we are told, in its most vicious state-England and the United States. Look at the result. I have no faith at all in speculative politics. A theorist in government is as dangerous as a theorist in medicine, or in agriculture, and for precisely the same reason

the subjects are too complicated and too obscure for simple and decisive experiments. I go for undisputed results in the long run. Now surely a philosophic inquirer into the history of the commerce and public economy of nations, if he saw a people preeminently distinguished in those particulars above all others, would be inclined to ascribe their superiority to what was peculiar in their institutions; at least, whatever might be his ideas à priori on such subjects, he would be very slow to deny to any remarkable peculiarity in those institutions its full importance as one of the probable causes of the success which he witnessed, unless he could clearly show the contrary. Then, sir, by what example are we to be guided in such matters if not by that of England-by far the most magnificent manifestation, that the world, in any age of it, has ever beheld, of the might and the grandeur of civilized life? Sir, I have weighed every syllable that I utter-I express a deliberate conviction, founded upon a patient inquiry and a comparison as complete as my limited knowledge has enabled me to make it, between the past and the present condition of mankind, and between the great nation of which I am speaking and those which surround her. Sir, there is a gulph between themthat narrow channel separates worlds-it is an ocean more than three thousand miles wide. I appeal to any one who has been abroad, whether going from England to any part of the continent-be not descending immensely in the scale of civilization. I know, sir, that that word is an ambiguous one. I know that, in some of the graces of polished society, in some of the arts of an elegant imagination, that, in the exact sciences and in mere learning and general intellectual cultivation, some nations have excelled, perhaps, many equalled, England. But, in that civilization, which, as I have said before, it is the great end of modern political economy to promote, and which is immediately connected with the subject before you-which at once springs out of, and leads to, the accumulation of capital and the distribution of wealth and comfort through all classes of a community, with an immense aggregate of national power and resources that civilization which enables man to "wield these elements, and arm him with the force of all their legions," which gives him dominion over all other creatures, and makes him emphatically the Lord of the Universe-that civilization which consists not in music, not in playing on the flute, as the Athenian hero said, but in turning a small city into a great one; in that victorious, triumphant, irresistible civilization, there is nothing recorded in the annals of mankind that does not sink into the shades of the deepest eclipse by the side of England. I say nothing of her recent achievements on the land and the sea; of her fleets, her armies, her subsidized allies. Look at the Thames crowded with shipping; visit her arsenals, her docks, her canals, her railways, her factories, her mines, her warehouses, her roads, and bridges; go through the streets of that wonderful metropolis, the bank, the emporium, and the exchange of the whole world; converse with those merchants

who conduct and control, as far as it is possible to control, the commerce of all nations, with those manufacturers who fill every market with their unrivalled products; go into that bank which is the repository of the precious metals for all Europe; consider its notes as well as the bills of private bankers, at a premium everywhere, more valuable than specie, symbols not merely of gold, but of what is far more precious than gold, yea, than fine gold, of perfect good faith, of unblemished integrity, of sagacious enterprise, of steadfast, persevering industry, of boundless wealth, of business coextensive with the earth, and of all these things possessed, exercised, enjoyed, protected under a system of liberty chastened by the law which maintains it, and of law softened and mitigated by the spirit of liberty which it breathes throughout. Sir, I know, as well as any one, what compensations there are for all this opulence and power, for it is the condition of our being that we « buy our blessings at a price." I know that there are disturbing causes which have hitherto marred, in some degree, the effect of this high and mighty civilization; but the hand of reform has been already applied to them, and every thing promises the most auspicious results. I have it on the most unquestionable authority, because, from an unwilling witness, that within the memory of man, never were the labouring classes of England so universally employed, and so comfortably situated as at the beginning of the present year.

But I said that there was another nation that had some experience in banking and its effects. Sir, I dare not trust myself to speak of my country with the rapture which I habitually feel when I contemplate her marvellous history. But this I will say, that on my return to it, after an absence of only four years, I was filled with wonder at all I saw and all I heard. What upon earth is to be compared with it? I found New York grown up to almost double its former size, with the air of a great capital, instead of a mere flourishing commercial town, as I had known it. I listened to accounts of voyages of a thousand miles in magnificent steamboats on the waters of those great lakes, which, but the other day, I left sleeping in the primeval silence of nature, in the recesses of a vast wilderness; and I felt that there is a grandeur and a majesty in this irresistible onward march of a race, created, as I believe, and elected to possess and people a continent, which belong to few other objects, either of the moral or material world. We may become so much accustomed to such things that they shall make as little impression on our minds as the glories of the Heavens above us; but, looking on them, lately, as with the eye of the stranger, I felt, what a recent English traveller is said to have remarked, that, far from being without poetry, as some have vainly alleged, our whole country is one great poem. Sir, it is so; and if there be a man that can think of what is doing, in all parts of this most blessed of all lands, to embellish and advance it, who can contemplate that living mass of intelligence, activity and improvement as it rolls on, in its sure and steady progress,

to the uttermost extremities of the west; who can see scenes of savage desolation transformed, almost with the suddenness of enchantment, into those of fruitfulness and beauty; crowned with flourishing cities, filled with the noblest of all populations; if there be a man, I say, that can witness all this passing under his very eyes, without feeling his heart beat high, and his imagination warmed and transported by it, be sure, sir, that the raptures of song exist not for him; he would listen in vain to Tasso or Camoens, telling a tale of the wars of knights and crusaders, or of the discovery and conquest of another hemisphere.

Sir, thinking as I do of these things; not doubting, for a moment, the infinite superiority of our race in every thing that relates to a refined and well ordered public economy, and in all the means and instruments of a high social improvement, it strikes me as of all paradoxes the most singular, to hear foreign examples seriously proposed for our imitation in the very matters wherein that superiority has ever appeared to me to be most unquestionable. The reflection has occurred to me a thousand times in travelling over the continent of Europe, as I passed through filthy ill-paved villages, through towns in which there is no appearance of an improvement having been made since the Reformation, as I have looked at the wretched hovel of the poor peasant or artisan, or seen him at his labours with his clumsy implements and coarse gear-what a change would take place in the whole aspect of the country, if it were to fall in the hands of Americans for a single generation!

But is it paper money and the credit system alone that have achieved all these wonders? I do not say so, sir; but can you say, can any one presume to say, that they have not done much of all this? I know that the cardinal spring and source of our success is freedom-freedom, with the peculiar character that belongs to it in our race-freedom of thought, freedom of speech, freedom of action, freedom of commerce, freedom not merely from the oppressions, but from those undue restraints and that impertinent interference of government in the interests properly belonging to individuals, which stand in the way of all improvement in the nations of continental Europe. It is this vital principle, the animating element of social equality, tempered and sobered by a profound respect for the authority of the laws, and for the rights of others, and acting upon that other prominent characteristic of the Anglo-Norman race, the strong instinct of property, with the personal independence and personal comfort that belong to it, that explains our unrivalled and astonishing progress. But of this rational, diffusive liberty, among a people so intelligent as ours, the credit system is the natural fruit, the inseparable companion, the necessary means and instrument. It is part and parcel of our existence. Whoever heard of CREDIT in a despotism, or an anarchy ? It implies confidence-confidence in yourself, confidence in your neighbour, confidence in your government, confidence in the administration of the laws, confidence in the sagacity, the integrity, the discretion of those with

whom you have to deal; confidence, in a word, in your destiny, and your fortune, in the destinies and the fortune of the country to which you belong; as, for instance, in the case of a great national debt. It is the fruit, I say, of all that is most precious in civilized life, and to quarrel with it is to be ungrateful to God for some of the greatest blessings he has vouchsafed to man. Compare Asia with Europe; hoarding has been the usage of the former from time immemorial, because it is slavish, oppressed and barbarous; and it is curious to see the effect of English laws in breaking up (as they are doing) that system in Hindoostan. Depend upon it, sir, all such ideas are utterly alien to our way of thinking-to all the habitudes of our people, and all the interests of the country. My friends from beyond the mountains are familiar with the great principle, the magical effect of credit in a young and progressive country. They know that miracles are wrought by a small advance of money to enable enterprise and industry to bring into cultivation a virgin soil. They know how soon the treasures of its unworn fertility enable them to pay off a loan of that sort with usurious interest, and make them proprietors of estates rising in value with the lapse of every moment. Compare the great western country now, with what it was twenty years ago sell it sub hasta-and compute, if the powers of arithmetic will enable you to do so, the augmentation of its riches. Sir, this is one of the phenomena of our situation to which attention has hardly ever been called-the manner in which the mere increase of population acts upon the value of property. To be struck with the prodigious results produced in this simple way, you have only to compare the estimated taxable property in Pennsylvania and New York, when it was returned for direct taxation in '99, with the returns of the same property, for the same purpose, in 1813, after an interval of fourteen years-you will see how it is that our people have been enriched by debt, and "by owing, owe not"-how with a balance of payments almost continually against them from the first settlement of the country, they have grown in riches beyond all precedent or parallel. You will appreciate all the blessings of the credit system-and imagine, perhaps, how this wonderful progress would have been impeded and embarrassed by the difficulties of a metallic circulation.

CATULLUS.

FROM AN ESSAY ON ROMAN LITERATURE.

IN reference to the merits of any merely literary composition, a foreigner must ever distrust his own opinions when they do not entirely coincide with those of native critics. For this reason, we feel bound to admit that we probably overrate Catullus and Lucretius in considering them (for we profess to have always considered them)—as in point of original genius, the two first poets of ancient Rome. The critics of their own country say nothing that is not in their favour, but it is plain that they do not entertain so exalted an opinion of their excellence as we have ventured to express. When we speak of "the poet," says Justinian, in the begin

ning of his Institutes, we mean Homer among the Greeks, and Virgil among the Romans; and there are others besides the Mantuan bard, who seem in the same way to take precedence of our favourites in the estimation of ancient writers.

Catullus had, among the poets of his own country, the title of doctus, or learned; for what reason, is not quite clear. If we are to suppose, however, with some of the commentators, that it was because of his familiar acquaintance with the Greek language and literature, we must do him the justice to say, that of all imitators he has the most originality-that of all erudite men he retains the greatest share of the playfulness, the buoyancy, and the vigour of natural talent. There is no constraint whatever in his movements-no parade or pedantry in his style. On the contrary, there never was a poet— we do not even except Shakspeare-who seemed to write more as the mood happened to prompt, and whose verses are stamped with such a decided character of facility and of spontaneity. This, indeed, is the great, and among the Latin poets, the peculiar charm of Catullus. Of all the Romans, he is most of a Greck, not by study and imitation, but by nature. His lively wit, his voluptuous character, his hearty affections, his powerful imagination, seem naturally to overflow in verse and "voluntary wake harmonious numbers." Julius Cæsar Scaliger, who finds fault with every thing, disputed this poet's pretensions to learning, and denounced his works as stuffed with nothing but vulgarity and ribaldry, but he afterwards sung a palinodia, declaring the Galliambic ode a mest noble composition, and the Epithalamium of Thetis and Peleus worthy to be placed by the side of the Eneid. Other writers have been equally lavish of their praise for other excellencies; Martial, for instance, ascribes to him an unrivalled superiority in the epigram. It is impossible to imagine any two things from the same pen more entirely unlike each other, than the ode just mentioned, and the sweet and delicate effusion upon Lesbia's Sparrow, nor any falling off so sudden as from either of these to the vulgarity and nastiness of some of the Hendecasyllables. His amatory poetry is less tender than that of Tibullus, and less gay and gallant than that of Ovid; but it is more simple, more cordial, more voluptuous than either. A modern reader would be very much disappointed if he expected to find in it that delicacy of sentiment; that culie des femmes; that distant, mysterious, and adoring love which inspired the muse of Dante and Petrarch, and which has ever since characterized the amorous ditties of our sonnetteers. The passion of Catullus had not a particle of Platonic abstraction in it—it was as far as possible from being metaphysical. It is deeply tinged with sensuality, but it has absolute possession of his whole being; he seems to be smitten to the bottom of his heart with its power-to be quite intoxicated with its delicious raptures. It is that "drunkenness of soul," of which Byron speaks, from an imagination excited and exalted by visions of bliss and images of beautywith every feeling absorbed in one devoted passion, and all the senses dissolved in a dream of love.