has invested it. But we are unwilling to occupy more space in contest with it.

Those parts of the work which relate to the fine arts and literature, are essays of remarkable power and beauty. The principal artists and writers of the country are passed in review, and criticized with great force, as well as general correctness. The remarks on painting, manifest considerable familiarity with the subject. We should be glad, if our extracts had not already extended to such length, to present these to our readers. But we cannot forbear quoting some passages from the reflections on American literature.

"America was civilized in her very origin. The early settlers felt, thought, and believed as their brethren in Europe; or, at least, did not differ from them sufficiently to create permanent distinctions. The people who obstructed their progress, and whom they conquered by arms, were not sufficiently powerful to call for an extraordinary demonstration of valor. It was not an expedition of Argonauts in quest of the golden fleece: it did not even partake of the military glory of the conquest of Mexico. The American Indians were a degraded race, without history, memory, or tradition. They seem to have been the remnants of a once powerful people, whom a general plague or a series of internal wars had reduced to the condition of the most abject wretchedness. There was no renown attached to their subjugation; it was the victory of intelligence over the barbarism of savages. No poetry, therefore, attaches to the conquest of the American soil, and the history of it is only remarkable from its conjunction with that of Europe. It was the oppression of Europe, which settled the American wilderness; it was the resistance against Europe, which introduced America into the ranks of nations. Previous to that period, America had been a European province, and its history an appendage to that of England. America enjoyed the political existence of a nation, before it had an historical one by geniture. No mythological fable is blended with her origin. Her children are not descended from the gods or the sun; they are pious Christians, who, from simple colonists, have at once risen into a powerful national independence. Had the American Indians, at the time of the European settlements, been a strong, organized nation, who, by amalgamating with the colonists, would have tinctured the manners of the settlers, and in turn received the superior arts of

"* Their religion, rites, and even their bravery, seem to warrant this conclusion."

civilization, then a national literature, essentially different from the English, might, perhaps, have arisen from the conjunction; but it would have been that of the Indians, and not of the settlers; it would have retarded the progress of independence for centuries, and, in its stead, given birth to another system of vassallage.

"Another means of levelling national distinctions, consists in the propagation of learning. The man of science belongs to no country, and has no prejudices except in favor of those who are his superiors in knowledge. In the common course of nature, the arts precede the sciences in every country, as poetry comes before prose; in America alone, the sciences have preceded the arts, and thus raised the nation beyond the tender susceptibility of fiction.-Rousseau's motto,

'Plus qu'on raisonne moins qu'on aime,'

applies not only to man, but also to Nature. The poetry and awe with which Nature inspires an untutored mind, are no concomitants of the demonstrative reasoning of mechanical philosophy; and her terrors cease to be sublime, when disarmed by the discovery of Franklin.* The sciences, which teach us to subject nature to human will, are most destructive of the imagination; and the universe itself appears pitiable in the shape of an orrery. Even the most profound researches of mathematical analysis diminish the poetic grandeur of the heavens, by reducing the infinite and boundless, to the computation of the infinitely small!'

'How immeasurably great, how infinitely sublime are the heavens! But the spirit of littleness pulled even heaven down.'t

"The Americans, as a nation, cannot be said to be inferior in science to any people in, Europe; for not only are its most useful branches more generally diffused and applied in the United States than either in England or France, but also the most abstruse departments of knowledge are cultivated and improved by men of competent talents. Their number, assuredly, is not as great as in Europe; but still they exist, and are sufficient to imprint a character on the nation. But men of science, as I have remarked before, belong to no country, and are, in themselves, incapable of giving a national impulse. They may excite emu

"What can be more averse to poetry, than the thunderbolt of Jove made harmless when caught by a lightning-rod."

"So unermesslich ist, so unendlich erhaben der Himmel!

Aber der Kleinigkeitsgeist zog auch den Himmel herab.'
"SCHILLER'S Poems."

lation, and contribute to the developement of intellect; but they cannot create such lasting distinctions and peculiarities, as we are in the habit of claiming for the national literature of a people.

"America has not passed through the different stages of civilization, each of which leaves its historical monuments and a distinct impression on the people. There was no community of religion, and hardly of feeling, previous to their common resistance against England. It was the genius of liberty which gave America a national elevation; and it is to this genius, therefore, we must look for national productions. It is the bond of union, the confession, the religion, the life of Americans; it is that which distinguishes them above all other nations in the world.

"But the genius of liberty, though it has chosen America for its permanent dwelling, overshadows, also, a portion of Europe. England, France, and Germany, are roused by its summons; and the poet of Europe, inspired by the same muse, kneels at the same altar, and worships the same God. Thus, the Americans, instead of being a distinct people, have become the representatives of liberty throughout the world. Their country has become the home of the banished; the asylum of the persecuted; the prospective heaven of the politically damned. Every people of Europe is represented in the United States; every tongue is spoken in the vast domain of freedom; the history of every nation terminates in that of America.

But this gigantic conglomeration, while it prognosticates the future sway of the United States, while it promises to revive the history of all ages and of every clime, is, nevertheless, one of the principal causes why America possesses, as yet, no national literature. Yet there is sufficient of English leaven in this enormous mass, to penetrate even its uttermost particles. The fructifying principle is everywhere visible, and the fruits are not tardy of coming. But the seed is English, though the soil and climate may give it a different developement." - pp. 105-108.

The last part of this extract is of unusual eloquence, bot of thought and language. In the anticipations in which th author indulges with regard to the literature of this country we join with pride and cordiality. "All other nations," h says, "have conquered by the sword, and their traces were marked by ruin and desolation; America alone vanquishe: her foes by civilization, and marks her course by moral and religious improvements. There is poetry in her national developement, and the settlements of her early colonies."

may be observed, that in literature and science, the Americans are as yet the imitators of Europe. But for how many years, we would ask, did all Europe imitate the ancients, receiving from them the forms of expression, and the rules of thought and investigation? Centuries elapsed before Galileo discovered, before Bacon promulgated, or rather enforced by his recommendation and example, the new philosophy, and before Shakspeare wrote. A people does not suddenly change its character, political or literary. The influence of the past is stronger than that of the present; and we must wait till our national character has settled into the permanent shape, which properly harmonizes with the magnificent scenery in which we are placed; till traditions have accumulated, and the history of our own continent sufficiently fills the mind, without allowing it to wander, for dearth of interest here, to the opposite shores of the ocean. Then may we expect new fountains of literature and intellectual effort to be opened. The inspiring genius of our institutions may preside over the forms of statuary, and the breathings of the canvass. The poet's lyre may sound a higher strain than has yet been reached; and the tongue of the orator burn with a more powerful eloquence. Another forest-born Demosthenes may

"With thunder shake the Philip of the seas;"

and the muse of history may find a great and untried theme in recording the progress of liberal institutions and the career of a free people.

C.S. Davis

ART. VII. Reports of Cases Argued and Adjudged in the Supreme Court of the United States, January Term, 1837. By RICHARD PETERS, Counsellor at Law, and Reporter of the Decisions of the Supreme Court of the United States. Volume XI. Philadelphia; Desilver, Thomas, & Co. 1837. 8vo. pp. 674.

THIS last volume of the published decisions of the Supreme Court of the Union is one of unusual, and, in certain respects, even of singular interest. Such it must surely be to those, who as general jurists, and as lovers moreover of constitutional jurisprudence, those, that is to say, whose pur

suits or inquiries are not confined to any mere professional round, have yet been accustomed to observe the train of judgments of that eminent tribunal, for the last more than third of a century; and who have been instructed out of them, if from no more intimate acquaintance, to reverence the great and venerable name of the late Chief Justice Marshall. Nor can there be more ample means of knowledge of his mind and character, than are supplied by these authentic materials. His saltem accumulem donis et fungar inani munere is the more than melancholy sentiment inscribed by the present volume, in a variety of expressive significations, to his judicial memory. Indeed, the very strikingly diversified traits of doctrine and opinion upon constitutional topics, which are manifested. throughout the principal cases reported, may be reckoned to be among the recorded honors, that already thicken round it with no unmeaning tribute; all mingled at the same time, as they most unquestionably are, with a sincere sense of his virtues. And although drawing, as these differences do, their various hues from previous casts of mind and turns of thinking, or from peculiar circumstances, and perhaps somewhat opposite points in the present composition of the court, yet as they are touched by the mild and mellow glories of the just sinking orb, they equally blend, in a living though saddened beam, that may long continue to shed its salutary radiance, and send the cheering and sustaining influence of its reflection through the solitary night-watch of the constitution.

Although this was not the first meeting, it may be mentioned, of that august tribunal, whose opinions are annually given to the public through this regular channel, since the disappearance of that illustrious luminary of law and equity, we mean in their high constitutional sense, - to whom we have just referred, and whom we follow with so much regret ; yet, we may allow ourselves to say, that no night had fallen. And we were only admonished of some indefinite approaching change, by circumstances which began to cast their coming shadows. The indications were of a nature not to be unheeded; nor could they fail to make an impression in regard to the uncertainty, in which the condition of that tribunal was suspended. We allude to that dense mass of vapors continually rising, and gathering around our highest seat of judicature, which assumes the endless and ever-shifting shape of constitutional questions. Cases of that now familiar denomination,