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character, and he walks erect. Nothing impedes him in his search for the true, the lovely and the good; no private hope, no private fear, no love of wife or child, of gold, or ease, or fame. He never seeks his own reputation; he takes care of his Being, and leaves his seeming to take care of itself. Fame may seek him; he never goes out of his way a single

inch for her.

He has not written a line which is not conceived in the interest of mankind. He never writes in the interest of a section, of a party, of a church, of a man, always in the interest of mankind. Hence comes the ennobling influence of his works. Most of the literary men of America, most of the men of superior education, represent the ideas and interests of some party; in all that concerns the welfare of the Human Race, they are proportionably behind the mass who have only the common culture; so while the thought of the people is democratic, putting man before the accidents of a man, the literature of the nation is aristocratic, and opposed to the welfare of mankind. Emerson belongs to the exceptional literature of the times-and while his culture joins him to the history of man, his ideas and his whole life enable him to represent also the nature of man, and so to write for the future. He is one of the rare exceptions amongst our educated men, and helps redeem American literature from the reproach of imitation, conformity, meanness of aim, and hostility to the progress of mankind. No faithful man is too low for his approval and encouragement; no faithless man too high and popular for his rebuke.

A good test of the comparative value of books, is the state they leave you in. Emerson leaves you tranquil, resolved on noble manhood, fearless of the consequences; he gives men to mankind, and mankind to the laws of God. His position is a striking one. Eminently a child of Christianity and of the American idea, he is out of the Church and out of the State. In the midst of Calvinistic and Unitarian superstition, he does not fear God, but loves and trusts Him. He does not worship the idols of our time-Wealth and Respectability, the two calves set up by our modern Jeroboam. He fears not the damnation these idols have the power to inflict-neither poverty nor social disgrace. In busy and bustling New England comes out this man serene and beautiful as a star, and shining like "a good deed in a naughty world.” Reproached as an idler, he is active as the sun, and pours out his radiant truth on Lyceums at Chelmsford, at

Waltham, at Lowell, and all over the land.

Out of a

Here is

cold Unitarian Church rose this most lovely light. Boston, perhaps the most humane city in America, with its few noble men and women, its beautiful charities, its material vigor, and its hardy enterprise; commercial Boston, where honor is weighed in the public scales, and justice reckoned by the dollars it brings; conservative Boston, the grave of the Revolution, wallowing in its wealth, yet grovelling for more, seeking only money, careless of justice, stuffed with cotton yet hungry for tariffs, sick with the greedy worm of avarice, loving money as the end of life, and bigots as the means of preserving it; Boston, with toryism in its parlors, toryism in its pulpits, toryism in its press, itself a tory town, preferring the accidents of man to man himself—and amidst it all there comes Emerson, graceful as Phoebus-Apollo, fearless and tranquil as the sun he was supposed to guide, and pours down the enchantment of his light, which falls where'er it may, on dust, on diamonds, on decaying heaps to hasten their rapid rot, on seeds new sown to quicken their ambitious germ, on virgin minds of youth and maids to waken the natural seed of nobleness therein, and make it grow to beauty and to manliness. Such is the beauty of his speech, such the majesty of his ideas, such the power of the moral sentiment in men, and such the impression which his whole character makes on them, that they lend him, everywhere, their ears, and thousands bless his manly thoughts.

ART. V.-PANSLAVISM.

DR. BERKLEY, Bishop of Cloyne, in 1725, sung of North
America, already aspiring to freedom, the following verses:
The Muse, disgusted at an aged clime,
Barren of every glorious theme,
In distant lands now waits a better time,
Producing subjects worthy fame.

In happy climes, where from the genial sun
And virgin earth such scenes ensue,
The force of art by nature seems outdone,
And fancied beauties by the true.

In happy climes, the seat of innocence,
Where nature guides and virtue rules,
Where men shall not impose for truth and sense,
The pedantry of courts and schools:

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There shall be sung another golden age,
The rise of empire and of arts,
The good and great inspiring epic rage,
The wisest heads and noblest hearts.

Not such as Europe breeds in her decay;
Such as she bred, when fresh and young,
When heavenly flame did animate her clay
By future poets shall be sung.

Westward the course of empire takes its way;
The four first acts already past,

A fifth shall close the drama with the day;
Time's noblest offspring is the last.

[March,

Westward Dr. Berkley's muse takes her flight; how many thousands of Europe's children have since hastened in the same direction; how many thousand hearts are still sending thither, across the Atlantic, their longing wishes. The mighty uprising of the nations of Middle Europe during the two past years, has been followed by so terrible an overthrow from the East, that even yet one rubs his eyes and asks himself, where and in what times are we living? Absolutism raises its head again in power, and threatens to trample down the fruits of centuries of care and culture. The butcheries of the courts martial in Vienna, in Baden, and in Hungary; the prisons filled throughout the land, and especially in Prussia and Austria, with political offenders, testify to the effects of the influence that is dragging Western Europe away from America with the arms of Russia. Absolutism and Democracy are now in contest for the possession of Europe.

Is the will of a single privileged individual to be law, or the constitutionally pronounced voice of the community? That is the question towards the solution of which all things are now tending. Democracy seemed, a year ago, secure of victory; now we might almost pronounce it entirely overthrown. Either statement however would be an exaggeration. Thus much is certain, the struggle still continues; the victories of the Democratic movement were only successful skirmishes. The dangers are still great. The position of Russia is threatening; the Czar stands forward so distinctly as the champion of Absolutism that sheer blindness alone can overlook or disregard the advance of the northern giant.

And truly gigantic are the proportions of the Russian empire. Nearly half of Asia and more than half of Europe are united into one whole under the sway of the potentate of St. Petersburg. What David and the Prophets foretold of a universal kingdom seems to find a fulfilment in Russia. What

the Jews dreamed of, what the Romans attempted, is perhaps reserved to the Russians to accomplish. The Roman empire, it is true, embraced the most cultivated nations of the populous shores of the Mediterranean. But Russia also since the time of Peter the Great has been making advances in culture, and at the same time endeavoring to get into her possession the sea-coasts of the North and the South. The contest for freedom in Hungary, in which the Poles participated, kindled the flames of Democracy on the borders of the Czar's dominions. By cunning and by force the flame has been got under, and the smoke rolls in suffocating volumes upon the West of Europe. The attempt to introduce the spirit of the new world and the new time into the neighborhood of Russia, has failed, and has only gone to increase her might and importance. Austria lies prostrate in the bonds of her powerful neighbor, and seeks a cold comfort in the notion that Russia fought in Hungary only for her own safety. Germany is the outwork against this Sclavonian inundation. But how stands it with this outwork? We can only say, the stones that must compose it, the individual German states, are there; but the wall is not yet built; the unity of Germany is as yet far from being accomplished. Russia knows who her foes are, and weighs their power; she will leave nothing undone that may contribute to prevent a federative union in Germany. The matter at present is in her own hands; the German union is in treaty between the hostile, jealous states of Prussia and Austria. Every government in Germany has it in its power to interrupt and to hinder. In short, Germany lies open to the enemy. The emissaries of the Russian monarch are at work in all the Cabinets. The German princes, disunited among themselves, are the more inclined to the Russian policy in proportion as they seek to oppose the progress of Democra cy; and the more they oppose it, the more they come under the yoke of Russia. Then is not the power of the Sultan at Constantinople dependent upon the pleasure of the Czar? Does not Russia know that the Christians of Greece are anxiously expecting his approach, and can hardly wait for the day when the Russian eagle will perch upon St. Sophia's, and the crescent make room for the cross? Will powerless Italy and the tottering Papal throne refuse the Russians a passage over the Alps and over the Rubicon ?

And finally France with her Napoleonidæ, that is, with the ashes of Napoleon, will she dare to remember the battles of

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Smolensk and Moskowa? Every fibre of France is quivering with the painful thought; Napoleon's fall was the triumph of Russia!

The balance of power in Europe has long ago become an empty figure of speech in the mouths of European diplomatists; Russia in particular looks down with a smile of pity upon this decayed fragment of ancient times in the heads of politicians. Cunning in politics, Russia ignores the balance of power, and thinks only of an overbalance, of a scale with chaff in one scale-pan, and the hundred-weight of her might and greatness in the other. People in Europe are afraid of a European war, and this fear prompts moderation and forbearance. Russia does not fear the war; she ardently desires it. A European war is for Russia equivalent to the possession of Europe. Already the armed hordes are encamped on the western frontiers; ready at the word of the Czar to overrun and conquer the defenceless territories of his disunited and already half-vanquished opponents. He will then openly rule over the powers that before were already in his interest, and the Emperor of Russia will be Emperor of Europe. Will England withstand him? She will suffer the punishment due for having left Poland and Hungary to perish at the feet of Russia. The nations of German and Roman origin will be swallowed up by Russia. Such is the progress of Panslavism in point of fact! But there is also an ideal Panslavism, which is the foundation of the other.

The Sclavonic race consider the right of universal dominion as belonging to itself, and itself as the upholder of true Christianity, the true Church, and thus the true source of Salvation to the nations. Moreover it has always kept itself free from all democratic movements and revolutionary desires, and has preserved in its politics a patriarchal system. Every thing has a fixed, Asiatic stamp, a persistency untouched by the variableness of the West of Europe. If we wish to look a little into the cradle of Panslavistic notions, we must, amongst other documents, examine a book that appeared in Paris in 1845, under the title of: "L'église officielle et le messianisme, l' église et le messie," by Adam Mickiewicz. The author of this work calls the Sclavonians the people of the purest patriarchal religion, unspoiled by phantasy and by science, full of innate piety; the people of expectation, whose history and development are yet to come; a people of Brahmins, of priests and kings, of true Christians, with whom a new era of spiritual philosophy will commence. Thus it is that Sclavonianism sets

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