take it for granted, that reason and wisdom dwell with them alone, or that their Maker has gifted them with the sole power of judging, and the sole right to dictate and decide what is expedient or just. There may be warmth of feeling without passion. The subject often requires it, and no man of good feelings and benevolent purpose, can restrain it. But the advice of Bolingbroke is good: "Write as you live, without passion; and build your reputation, as you build your happiness, on the foundations of truth."

The mass of light literature that is so eagerly sought for, and consumed at the present day, speaks sadly for the taste that is abroad in the country. The mind that can take delight in reading, and meditating on works of this stamp, can have little real relish for truth, and, it is to be feared, is but poorly able to comprehend or to find it. For these outrage all truth; and he who can see and feel this is at once disgusted. For the same reason that he loves Shakspeare and Milton, and can linger with admiration on their pages; that he delights to "live along their lines," and luxuriate over the beauty, and strength of their language, the deep sublimity of their conceptions, and the true characters they have drawn; for this reason, does he put away in displeasure and sorrow, such superlative farces on human nature. And yet, these devourers of love, and daggers, and nonsense, imagine that they are studying "style," or searching out the "secret springs of action," or cultivating the "finer feelings," and would fain have others believe it too. But the truth is, that there are few things that so belittle the soul as the reading of such works. If they displayed any of that high, native romance of feeling, so richly eloquent in the great English poetess; any of the intellect of De Stael, or of that consummate knowledge of men which has so distinguished Sir Walter Scott, the case would be different. As they are, their natural tendency is to beget a puling sentiment, and sickly taste, wholly unworthy of a man and a scholar.

This age has been well named by Carlyle, a mechanical age. Men do, in reality, think, speak, and write, as parts of machines, moving together, and dependant on each other; and yet, obey in so doing, no fixed laws, but change with the changing rules of popular custom. They have at last become so civilized, that their souls have lost much of their own native and guiding power. They are cramped and bound tight about by the stiff restraints of an arbitrary fashion, lest they should breathe deeply and full, of the free air, and grow up to a perfect stature and natural proportion. The barbarian speaks as he feels; our civilized man, as it is the fashion to feel. The former may be at one extreme, but the latter is surely at the worse. If it is customary to be unable to comprehend a certain author-he is darker and more obscure than the realms of chaos and old night. If a certain class of men

have begun to prate extravagantly on any subject-at once a thousand ears catch the strain, and a thousand tongues thunder the silly paradoxes over the wide country. Calm eyed, and calm voiced men are few. Our writers receiving their impulse, not from an original, ever active force within, but from the mad momentum of a power without and around, assume language and sentiments that do not properly belong to them. Or at least, they do not write out in the simplicity of their hearts, their own individual, spontaneous feelings, their own original, and calmly digested ideas. Hence, it is plain must proceed much that is artificial and sometimes ridiculous. As in daily life, those who act out their own real candid selves, are seldom or never the objects of sport, so is it in writing. He who writes because his honest, strong convictions force him, is not often foolish or contemptible. I wish to add a few words on the necessity of always seeking the truth in our investigations, in all its extent and exactness, if we would judge aright, and wish to enjoy the quiet fixedness of certainty.

Moral truth, the most important of all, does not, like mathematical, force itself upon us. The reason probably is, that our perception of the axioms and postulates of morality is slow, dull, and oftentimes false. Here lies the great difficulty. There is danger lest this mental sense be injured so that it deceive, or fail us; for much is required of it. There are many positions in which objects must be seen, and the inward eye must be able to recognize them; there are different mediums through which the light must pass,-the eye must compensate for refraction, and false coloring, and lastly, the organ itself is exceedingly delicate, and by careless using, the nice lenses are easily turned awry, or so fixed in one position, that they can no longer adapt themselves to the ever changing situations in which they are called upon to judge of complex and difficult objects. We may not tamper with our minds. They are sufficiently erring, of necessity, and too much care cannot be taken to keep them in the right course. The river has once broken its bounds, and though its channel be the straightest, and deepest, and its embankments high and strong, there is always some place of weakness-some small stream still flowing from a gap but partly filled. Be watchful and busy, or it will open a way for the whole body of waters; they will be poured out on the plain,-their strength divided, and their purity lost.

With our best endeavors to reach the truth, we sometimes err; and the more careless we are, the oftener do we wander. He who, for any reason, accustoms himself to write against the opinion his honest convictions approve, will, sooner or later, find his perception of truth less quick, and nice. The order and symmetry of his mind is broken up. His habits of thinking become weak and

loose; the exact reverse of that close and compact investigation, which alone is sure to guide aright. He learns to seek for arguments in place of truth, and is ever apprehensive lest the next will overturn all that he has found before. There clings about him continually a shackling fear, nay, almost a consciousness that he has foolishly blundered, which gives rise either to a wavering timidity, or a determined and unmanly obstinacy. Like the stream, his strength is divided, and he wanders blindly on, till lost in the pestilent marshes of error.

Every writer ought, therefore, to make it an unchanging principle of action, to seek the exact truth in the case of each particular subject that comes before him, and having found it, to unfold it. He will then enjoy a quiet, unassuming self respect, and command the confidence and approval of his fellow men. He will escape all those contemptible faults of style, which are the constant marks of a narrow mind, or a narrow soul; and will often, too, show a strength, and self-sustaining loftiness of conception, which will disarm the critic, and oblige him to stop and confess that he has to do with a man. Such an one, he who has this sure consciousness of right, who can feel his vigorous heart at each stroke beat honest blood throughout his frame, alone can walk erect and secure amid friends and foes, through prosperity and adversity. Solicitous for the cause of truth alone, he will see with gladness his own errors uncovered, their ill tendency arrested, and will feel no anxiety lest his works and name should not descend to posterity; convinced that if they deserve it, they will be immortal,-willing that if unworthy, they should die. Such is the spirit our countrymen need. It is that which the greatest and best of men have almost always possessed in a high degree. Thus has it been in Greece, in England, and in America-with Socrates, with Milton, Newton, Washington, and Franklin. It must be so of necessity; for in the one case-the great man is able to compass at a view so large a portion of all truth, to see so clearly the beauty and symmetry of those different parts of the one universe, which are open to his sight, that it would be an outrage on the very laws of his being, it would be going contrary to his own nature, to have a different aim, or a stronger desire. In the case of the good man, from the very fact that he is good, he loves the truth as he loves his God, and seeks to know and follow it as he seeks to know and obey his Maker.

By learning from the example that either of these sets us, our countrymen (and we with them) may avoid the worst faults of bad writers, and reach some of the high excellencies of those whose works are a lasting blessing, and an unfading honor to their native land.

354

THE GRAVES OF THE REGICIDES.

In the rear of the Center Church, in New Haven, are three graves which have long excited interest, from the tradition that they contain the ashes of Whalley, Goffe, and Dixwell, the Regicides. The very minute inquiries, instituted by President Stiles into the last history of these illustrious exiles, render it highly probable that Goffe and Whalley, were first interred in Hadley, and that, for fear of outrage, their remains were secretly transferred to New Haven, and laid by the side of Dixwell, who is known to have been buried beneath the stone which bears his name. The mysterious characters, chiseled upon the now misshapen and rugged monuments, are but tokens of the fear expressed by Dixwell on his death bed, "that his enemies might dishonor his ashes."

From crag to crag they fly-
Their roof the open sky-

Their couch the stone:
A damp and dismal cave,
A skiff upon the wave,
Is theirs alone.

They are waked at the midnight hour
To retreat from the arm of power,

Or remain to die :

They are warned as they kneel in prayer
To escape to the mountain air,
By the foe's fierce cry.

It was whispered that holy men
Had access to these outlaws' den

And imparted aid:

That concealed by the laurel's bloom
Was a stone, 'mid the forest gloom,
Where their food was laid.

It was thus for a score of years-
The lone prey of relentless fears-
That they lingered on;

Till old age laid his wasting hand
On the brows of the exiled band,
And the conquest won.

It is over-the toilsome strife;
The long struggle to rescue life

Is forever o'er :

The strict search for the outlawed men,
Through the wild and the silent glen,

Shall be known no more.

They who sought them across the wave
Long have slept in the narrow grave-

They have ceased to hate;
And the son who regained the crown,
He hath laid it forever down,

And resigned his state.

Yet betray not the sacred trust,
Lest some outrage insult their dust,
From forgotten foes;

For, o'erhung by this temple's shade,
Are the bones of the exiles laid,
In their last repose.

Fare thee well! yet with noiseless tread,
Lest thou startle the weary dead

From his tranquil rest:

It was long ere they shelter found-
Let them sleep 'neath the grassy mound
Never more opprest.

V. H. Z.

JEDEDIAH BIRCH.

JEDEDIAH BIRCH was a genuine Yankee. In him existed all that frankness, nobleness of spirit and humor, which are characteristic of this class of people. That he was full of the latter, even to overflowing, needed no other evidence than the constant winking of his right eye, and a convulsive twitching of the left corner of his mouth, which habits, it is said, he contracted while an infant, by laughing at his own thoughts. Jedediah, moreover, had been a traveler, and like many great travelers before him, had always performed his journeys on horseback, having been "loaned" while at the age of thirteen, to ride the horse on a neighboring canal. Jedediah was distinguished above all his fellows, and was looked up to by even the highest men in Pinetown, for he stood six feet twelve inches in his stockings. Strange, however, as it may seem, in all the public meetings, Jedediah, although a very fluent and argumentative speaker, possessed but little weight, never exceeding one hundred and fifty pounds.