warlike preparations of great powers are made at enormous expense, I say that so far from their being any security to peace they are directly the contrary, and tend at once to war. For it is natural that men, having adopted means they think efficient to an end, should desire to put their efficiency to the test, and to have some direct result from their labor and expense. CHAPTER XXIII. MARTIAL LITERATURE. "Seven years' fighting sets a whole kingdom back in learning and virtue to which they were creeping, it may be a whole age."-JEREMY BENTHAM. "The course of education from infancy to manhood, at present pursued, tends to inspire the mind with military ardor and a love of glory. Almost as soon as a boy is born, care is taken to give his mind a military turn."-WILLIAM LADD. WE have before us a list of forty-eight volumes, which are connected with the late war, and which generally approve highly of its occurrence. They consist of both prose and poetry, history and biography, travels and essays. They are deeply imbued with the martial spirit, and laud to the skies the achievements of the American arms in Mexico. One of the unhappy consequences of this war is, that it has thus created a literature adverse to morals, refinement and religion. This war-literature has circulated through the newspapers and cheap works over the whole land. The lives of victorious generals, the bloody feats of prowess, the histories of battles and sieges, have formed a good part of the reading of the mass of the people, and especially of many young persons, during the three past years. The sacred power of poetry has been desecrated to laud the cruel deeds of war. The historian has exhausted upon it all his research. The fine arts have been employed to pamper the love of war, and by pictures and panoramas, to set on fire the blood of youth with the intoxicating passion of martial achievements. The country is full of these things. Every village has its "views" of battles, and the siege at Vera Cruz, or the charge at Buena Vista. The eye of youth is taught to sparkle at the sight of a battle-piece, before it knows what war is. The natural effect upon society of such reading, and war-songs, and exhibitions is exceedingly unfavorable to all the leading moral interests of a free country. It places before the individual a false standard of character, and cheats him into the belief that the best end of life is to figure in some important scene, to do some great thing, however wrong or bloody, and to disown the quiet pursuits of peace. It places before the nation a wrong standard, and befools the people with the idea that war, and not peace, is their real interest, that they shall gain some valuable end by invading the domains of their neighbors, and conquering a vast extent of barren and unhealthy territory. The idea of the true destiny of our country in liberty, equality and self-government, has by this miasma of war been corrupted into the false idea of our destiny as consisting in power, military renown, and the vulgar guilt of the savage nations of old, or the unbaptized empires of modern Europe. The news of war, the descriptions of cities taken, of victories won, of men killed, are of a poisonous moral influence. They paganize a Christian people. They familiarize them with carnage and cruelty. They make them forget the sermon on the mount, and the prayer on the cross. They fill the heads and hearts of the young with perverted notions of right and wrong, and educate them in their day and generation to be men of blood. No nation ever came out of war but with a lowered standard of moral principle, and an increased amount of profligacy, and an augmented number of drunkards, vagabonds, gamblers, and wretched, ruined men. At the present day, when the people almost universally read, the evil of such a literature is greatly enhanced. It is so cheap that all can buy it. It is so diffused, that it enters every nook and corner of the land. It is so stimulating to the curiosity and passions of half-educated minds, that they find it invested with all the charms of romance. Indeed not less than half a dozen novels of the cheap kind, independently of the histories and biographies above enumerated; have already taken their plots and incidents from the war with Mexico. Nor has this military literature by any means exhausted itself. The advertising columns show that it has new productions in reserve. The seed of future wars has thus been sown broadcast over our country, and wrong impressions have been made upon thousands of young and ductile minds which will never be effaced. The numerous war-speeches in and out of Congress, the voluminous war-documents issued from the capital of the country, and the public journals spreading before the eyes of millions of readers the "glorious news from Mexico," the 66 great victory won," all belong to this noxious species of literature. For unless accompanied with proper correctives and remonstrances, they pervert the moral principles of the people, arouse their passion for arms, and withdraw their interest and attention from those humble but praiseworthy pursuits of agriculture, commerce, and manufactures, which cannot compete with the brilliant exploits of sieges and battles," in pomp and circumstance." "The pesti lence that walketh in darkness and the destruction that wasteth at noonday" have been abroad in our land, and gathered from city and country the fearful harvest of death; but better, far better, that an annual cholera should decimate our population, than that the deadly malaria of such a literature should infect the mind and corrupt the heart of America. The evil in one case is death to the body, but in the other it is death to Freedom, death to the progress of Peace, and death to the hopes of the world. Vast and beneficent is the influence of a pure and elevated literature; but when the historians and orators of a nation contribute by their works to foster the spirit of war and the pagan passion of glory, they are calling back the dark ages of blood and oppression again to overshadow the earth. Many a splendid lyric from the poet's burning soul, many a persuasive appeal from the speaker's inmost heart, have gone forth against this war. We are thankful for these indignant remonstrances against evils that could not be arrested. But let us pray, if for one thing more unceasingly than another, that the literature and the fine arts of America may be rescued from following the example of the old world, and that they may consecrate their glorious creations of genius and beauty to the God, not of war, but of Peace. Let them adopt the noble motto of Allston, "No battle-pieces." CHAPTER XXIV. WAR AND THE FIRESIDE. "The tramp of marching hosts disturbs the plough, MRS. BARBAuld. REGARDING, as we do, the domestic relations of life as the appointment of heaven for the education, and happiness of mankind, and home as the centre of some of the purest and happiest influences known in society, we come now to consider the Mexican war in its bearing on these great interests of the respective countries involved in the conflict. The preceding chapters have already told a part of the tale. But the subject is one of sufficient moment to deserve a separate consideration. "The war and the fireside" need to be brought into direct juxtaposition, that all the wickedness of the one may be revealed in the light and blessedness of the other. When Satan approached the Garden, where dwelt the happy pair, the mighty poet represents him as clothing himself in the most seductive, but most fatal, guise. War puts on its most specious garb of honor, patriotism, and freedom, when it comes to take away the pillars and |