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A friend sends us the following brief notice of a new historical work issued at Paris:

"The Reign of Louis XI., by Benazet, is the most interesting work I have read for a long time. The author represents Louis as sagacious and cunning, but not cruel, as we have been heretofore led to suppose him; exceedingly placable, and having the interest of France deeply at heart-but grossly superstitious, and, like all such persons, very much afraid of sickness and death. By him the postal communications were established; and he did much towards improving the condition of the lower orders. On the whole, Mr. Benazet thinks the reign one of the most brilliant, and Louis one of

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style of this volume is chaste, and the narrative happily carried out. The novelty of the views-which are rendered specious at least-forms a strong attraction, and makes the book doubly in structive."

In the rural districts, with the exception of a small number of remote localities, which remain strangers to the movement of civilization, and are, in a manner, isolated from the crowd who carry with them their vices-in these parts of the country doubt and indifference have made sad havoc. If the law of God is not entirely dead in their hearts, it languishes; it no longer inspires them to act, and very little would be required to extirpate it altogether. Trite and vulgar objections against religion; raillery and ridicule, added to impiety, against sacred things, have found their way into the villages without the aid of instruction, without the help of books or newspapers. It is sufficient for this purpose that travelling colporteurs the wisest kings, that France has known. or pedlars run over France distributing everything that is bad, and thus ministering to evil passions. Add to this, multitudes of soldiers, who are, it is true, taught and disciplined in their garrisons and barracks, where they learn anything but to love and serve God-who may bring into villages habits of order and industry, but who too often lavish THE Jamaica legislature was opened at the unuinsult and abuse upon religion and its ministers. sually early period of the 19th October, in order to We must not delude ourselves. Religion has provide for a great falling off in the produce of the nothing to lose, she has everything to gain. The to reduce the income below the point of expenditure. import-duties; probably not so great, however, as supposed moral superiority of the peasant, at this In his opening speech, the governor admitted the moment, is an error which every one will acknowl- depressed condition of the colony. He warned the edge who has studied the question. We must legislature that the English parliament would not look into Idyls for pictures of rural innocence; retract its steps in the direction of free trade, so as every curate knows too well the truth on the sub- to restore protection for the produce of British colject, and if he dreads the propagation of letters or had a strong claim to relief by a further reduction onies; but he declared his own opinion that they rudiments, it is that, owing to the general indiffer- of duty on their own sugars and rum, if the finances ence of spirit and laxity of morals, everything be- of England would bear it. He did not entertain comes a subject of terror for him, and he fears much expectation of advantage to the colony from that every change may only produce an aggra- the immigration of labor; but he felt sure that the vation of evil. The state of things is also as dis-slave-trade would not last long in the face of treatressing in those parts of the country which remain ties against it; and after it should have ceased, the Africans would learn to estimate the advantages of plunged in ignorance as in those where education migration to the West Indies. In their reply to has made some progress; with this difference, that, this speech, the house of assembly made a last and in the first mentioned, the passions of the people earnest appeal to the government and parliament of are sheer brutal-vice has an utterly gross char- Great Britain "to adopt such measures for the acter which is revolting to the heart. In the one relief of the colony, by the remission of the duties -observes a writer, (M. Cormenin,) who cannot on colonial produce or otherwise, as may, by susbe accused of calumniating the people-they be-taining the value of private property, enable the lieve all sorts of superstitions-the quack instead of the physician; the sorcerer rather than the curate; the devil whom they fear, and not God of whom they have no idea; power, which oppresses, and not the law which protects; self-interest, which appropriates the wealth of others to itself, and not justice which commands them to respect their neighbors' property. In the other, they believe nothing-everywhere the wor ship of money has superseded that of God; a wither ing egotism has taken possession of every indi vidual; personal interest is the sole motive of action; an insatiable avarice pervades all hearts, and they seek to satisfy it by every possible means by cunning, roguery, and by attacks upon property; by domestic theft, and by seizing the landlords' crops. They do not forge, because they do not know how to write; but the course of justice is always fettered by false witnesses bribed by a very low price.

faith with the public creditor." The assembly island to support its public institutions and maintain declared itself "ready to provide for the contingencies of the island to the 30th December, 1848, in the fervent hope that ere the termination of that period the case of the island will have been considered and ample relief granted by the Imperial Parliament:" but intimated that, in the present state of the island, it could not "with propriety proceed to the consideration of any measure involving the further expenditure of the public money."

FORTY-THREE officers of the Thirteenth Light Dragoons are said to have been compelled to quit the regiment since 1840, in consequence of the extravagant expenditure on the regimental mess.— Globe.

A MAN having thrown a stone instead of an apple other day, the elephant was so incensed at the trick, into an elephant's mouth at Lutterworth fair, the that with one blow of his trunk he felled the of fender; who was only rescued from further punishment by the bystanders' dragging him away.

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SCRAPS.-Man's Lasting Works, 66-The Bridge at the Falls; Funeral of Chancellor Kent, 67-Miscellany, 78, 90 and 95.

PROSPECTUS.-Tuis work is conducted in the spirit cf | ttell's Museum of Foreign Literature, (which was favorably received by the public for twenty years,) but as it is twice as large, and appears so often, we not only give spirit and freshness to it by many things which were excluded by a month's delay, but while thus extending our scope and gathering a greater and more attractive variety, are able so to increase the solid and substantial part of our literary, historical, and political harvest, as fully to satisfy the wants of the American reader.

The elaborate and stately Essays of the Edinburgh, Quarterly, and other Reviews; and Blackwood's noble criticisms on Poetry, his keen political Commentaries, highly wrought Tales, and vivid descriptions of rural and mountain Scenery; and the contributions to Literature, History, and Common Life, by the sagacious Spectator, the sparkling Examiner, the judicious Athenæum, the busy and industrious Literary Gazette, the sensible and comprehensive Britannia, the sober and respectable Christian Observer; these are intermixed with the Military and Naval reminiscences of the United Service, and with the best articles of the Dublin University, New Monthly, Fraser's, Tail's, Ainsworth's, Hood's, and Sporting Magazines, and of Chambers' admirable Journal. We do not consider it beneath our dignity to borrow wit and wisdom from Punch; and, when we think it good enough, make use of the thunder of The Times. We shall increase our variety by importations from the continent of Europe, and from the new growth of the British colonies.

The steamship has brought Europe, Asia, and Africa, into our neighborhood; and will greatly multiply our connections, as Merchants, Travellers, and Politicians, with all parts of the world; so that much more than ever it

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now becomes every intelligent American to be informeu of the condition and changes of foreign countries. And this not only because of their nearer connection with ourselves, but because the nations seem to be hastening, through a rapid process of change, to some new state of things, which the merely political prophet cannot compute or foresee.

Geographical Discoveries, the progress of Colonization, (which is extending over the whole world,) and Voyages and Travels, will be favorite matter for our selections; and, in general, we shall systematically and very ully acquaint our readers with the great department of Foreign affairs, without entirely neglecting our own.

While we aspire to make the Living Age desirable to all who wish to keep themselves informed of the rapid progress of the movement-to Statesmen, Divines, Lawyers, and Physicians-to men of business and men of leisure-it is still a stronger object to make it attractive and useful to their Wives and Children. We believe that we can thus do some good in our day and generation; and hope to make the work indispensable in every well-informed family. We say indispensable, because in this day of cheap literature it is not possible to guard against the influx of what is bad in taste and vicious in morals, in any other way than by furnishing a sufficient supply of a healthy character. The mental and moral appetite must be gratified.

We hope that, by "winnowing the wheat from the chaff" by providing abundantly for the imagination, and by a large collection of Biography, Voyages and Travels, History, and more solid matter, we may produce a work which shall be popular, while at the same time it will aspire to raise the standard of public taste.

Agencies.-We are desirous of making arrangements in all parts of North America, for increasing the circula tion of this work-and for doing this a liberal commission will be allowed to gentlemen who will interest themselves in the business. And we will gladly correspond on this subject with any agent who will send us undoubted refer

ences.

Postage. When sent with the cover on, the Living Age consists of three sheets, and is rated as a pamphlet, at 4 cents. But when sent without the cover, it comes within the definition of a newspaper given in the law, and cannot legally be charged with more than newspaper postage, (14 cts.) We add the definition alluded to:

A newspaper is "any printed publication, issued in numbers, consisting of not more than two sheets, and published at short, stated intervals of not more than one month, conveying intelligence of passing events."

Monthly parts. For such as prefer it in that form, the Living Age is put up in monthly parts, containing four or five weekly nuinbers. In this shape it shows to great advantage in comparison with other works, containing in each part double the matter of any of the quarterlies. But we recommend the weekly numbers, as fresher and fuller of life. Postage on the monthly parts is about 14 cents. The volumes are published quarterly, each volume containing as much matter as a quarterly review gives in eighteen months.

WASHINGTON, 27 DEC., 1845.

Or all the Periodical Journals devoted to literature and science which abound in Europe and in this country, this has appeared to me to be the most useful. It contains indeed the exposition only of the current literature of the English language, but this by its immense extent and comprehension includes a portraiture of the human mind in the utmost expansion of the present age. J. Q. ADAMS.

LITTELL'S LIVING AGE.-No. 192.-15 JANUARY, 1848.

From Blackwood's Magazine.

EMERSON.

a peculiar mystery attached to one phenomenon of nature more than another, is essentially poetic. Several poets, our Campbell amongst the number, have complained that the laws of optics have dis

THE genius of America seems hitherto disposed to manifest itself rather in works of reason and re-enchanted the rainbow; but the analysis of Newflection than in those displays of poetic fervor ton is poetry itself compared to that instance of the which are usually looked for in a nascent literature. daring and levelling spirit of science which FrankAnd a little consideration would lead us, probably, lin exhibited, when he proved the lightning to be to expect this. America presents itself upon the plain electricity; took the bolts of Jupiter, analyzed scene, enters into the drama of the world, at a them, bottled them in Leyden jars, and experitime when the minds of men are generally awak-mented on them as with the sparks of his own ened and excited to topics of grave and practical electrical machine.

importance. It is not a great poem that mankind As the first efforts of American genius were in now want or look for; they rather demand a great the paths of grave and searching inquiry, so, too, work, or works, on human society, on the momen- at this present moment, if we were called upon tous problems which our social progress, as well as to point out amongst the works of our trans-Atlanour social difficulties, alike give rise to. If on a tic brethren, our compatriots still in language, the new literature a peculiar mission could be imposed, one which, above all others, displayed the unsuch would probably be the task assigned to it. doubted marks of original genius-it would be a prose work, and one of a philosophical character we should single out :-we should point to the writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson.

The energetic and ceaseless industry of the people of America, the stern and serious character of the founders of New England, the tendency which democracy must necessarily encourage to reason much and boldly on the interests of the community -would all lead us to the same anticipation; so far as any anticipation can be warranted, regarding the erratic course and capricious development of literary genius.

The Americans are frequently heard to lament the absence of nationality in their literature. Perhaps no people are the first to perceive their own character reflected in the writings of one of their countrymen; this nationality is much more open to the observation of a foreigner. We are quite The first contribution, we believe, our libraries sure that no French or German critic could read received from America, was the half theological, the speculations of Emerson, without tracing in half metaphysical treatise on the Will by Jonathan them the spirit of the nation to which this writer Edwards. This follower of Calvin is understood belongs. The new democracy of the New World to have stated the gloomy and repulsive doctrines is apparent, he would say, in the philosophy of of his master with an unrivalled force of logic. one who yet is no democrat, and, in the ordinary Such is the reputation which Edwards on the Will sense of the word, no politician. For what is the enjoys, and we are contented to speak from repu- prevailing spirit of his writings? Self-reliance, tation. The doctrine of necessity, even when in- and the determination to see in the man of to-day, telligently applied to the circle of human thoughts in his own, and in his neighbor's mind, the elements and passions, is not the most inviting tenet of of all greatness. Whatever the most exalted charphilosophy. It is quickly learned, and what little acters of history, whatever the most opulent of fruit it yields is soon gathered. But when com- literatures, has displayed or revealed, of action or bined with the theological dogma, wrung from texts of thought-the germ of all lies within yourself. of Scripture, of predestination; when the law of This is his frequent text. What does he say of necessity supposed to regulate the temper and affairs history? "I have no expectation that any man of the human being in this little life, is converted will read history aright, who thinks that what was into a divine sentence of condemnation to a future done in a remote age, by men whose names have and eternal fate—it then becomes one of the most resounded far, has any deeper sense than what he odious and irrational of tenets that ever obscured is doing to-day." He is, as he describes himself, the reason or clouded the piety of mankind. We an endless seeker of truth, with no past at his confess, therefore, that we are satisfied with re- back." He delights to raise the individual existechoing the traditional reputation of Jonathan Ed-ing mind to the level, if not above the level, of all wards, without earning, by perusal of his work, that has been thought or enacted. He will not the right to pronounce upon its justice. endure the imposing claims of antiquity, of great

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The first contribution, also, which America made | nations, or of great names. "It is remarkable," to the amount of our knowledge, was of a scientific he says, "that involuntarily we always read as character, and, moreover, the most anti-poetical superior beings. Universal history, the poets, the imaginable. As such, at least, it must, be de- romancers, do not, in their stateliest pictures, in scribed by those who are accustomed to think that the sacerdotal, the imperial palaces, in the triumphs VOL. XVI. 7

CXCII.

LIVING AGE.

of will or of genius, anywhere make us feel that | wear out virtue?" And in a more sublime mood we intrude, that this is for our betters, but rather he proceeds: "Whenever a mind is simple, and is it true that in their grandest strokes, there we receives a divine wisdom, then old things pass away feel most at home. All that Shakspeare says of means, teachers, texts, temples fall. Whence, the king, yonder slip of a boy that reads in the cor- then, this worship of the past? The centuries are ner, feels to be true of himself." conspirators against the sanity and majesty of the soul. Man is timid and apologetic. He is no longer upright. He dares not say, 'I think,' 'I am,' but quotes some saint or sage. He is ashamed before the blade of grass or the blowing rose. These roses under my window make no reference to former roses, or to better ones; they are for what they are; they exist with God to-day. There is no time to them. There is simply the rose-perfect in every moment of its existence. But man postpones or remembers; he does not live in the present, but with reverted eye laments the past, or, heedless of the riches that surround him, stands on tiptoe to foresee the future. He cannot be happy and strong until he, too, lives with nature in the present, above time."

Neither do the names of foreign cities, any more than that of ancient nations, overawe or oppress him. Of travelling, he says, "I have no churlish objection to the circumnavigation of the globe, for the purposes of art, of study, and benevolence, so that the man is first domesticated, or does not go abroad with the hope of finding somewhat greater than he knows. He who travels to be amused, or to get somewhat which he does not carry, travels away from himself and grows old even in youth among old things. In Thebes, in Palmyra, his will and mind have become old and dilapidated as they. He carries ruins to ruins. Travelling is a fool's paradise. We owe to our first journeys the discovery that place is nothing. At home, I dream that at Naples, at Rome, I can be intoxicated with beauty, and lose my sadness. I pack my trunk, embrace my friends, embark on the sea, and at last wake up in Naples, and there beside me is the stern fact, the sad self, unrelenting, identical, that I fled from. I seek the Vatican and the palaces. I affect to be intoxicated with sights and suggestions, but I am not intoxicated. My giant goes with me wherever I go."

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Surely these quotations alone-which we have made with the additional motive of introducing at once to our readers the happier style and manner of the American philosopher-would bear out the French or German critic in their views of the nationality of this author. The spirit of the New World, and of a self-confident democracy, could not be more faithfully translated into the language of a high and abstract philosophy than it is here. We say that an air blowing from prairie and forest, and the New Western World, is felt in the tone and spirit of Emerson's writings; we do not intend to intimate that the opinions expressed in them are at all times such as might be anticipated from an American. Far from it. Mr. Emerson regards the world from a peculiar point of view, that of an idealistic philosophy. Moreover, he is one of those wilful, capricious, though powerful, thinkers, whose opinions it would not be very easy to anticipate, who balk all prediction, who defy augury.

In a still higher strain he writes, "There is one mind common to all individual men. Every man is an inlet to the same, and to all of the same. He that is once admitted to the right of reason is made a freeman of the whole estate. What Plato has thought he may think; what a saint has felt he may feel; what at any time has befallen any man he can understand. Who hath access to this universal mind, is a party to all that is or can be done, for this is the only and sovereign agent." This passage is taken from the commencement of the Essay on History, and the essay entitled "Na- For instance, a foreigner might naturally expect ture," opens with a similar sentiment. He dis- to find in the speculations of a New England phiclaims the retrospective spirit of our age that would losopher, certain sanguine and enthusiastic views "put the living generation into masquerade out of of the future condition of society. He will not find the faded wardrobe of the past.' He will not see them here. Our idealist levels the past to the through the eyes of others. "Why should not we present, but he levels the future to the present also," he demands, "enjoy an original relation to also. If with him all that is old is new, so also the universe? Why should not we have a poetry all that is new is old. It is still the one great uniand philosophy of insight, and not of tradition, and versal mind-like the great ocean-ebbing, flowa religion by revelation to us, and not the history ing, in tempest now, and now in calm. He will of theirs? The sun shines to-day also! Let us not join the shout that sees a new sun rising on demand our own works, and laws, and worship." the world. For ourselves, (albeit little given to In the Essay on Self-reliance-a title which the too sanguine mood,) we have more hope here might over-ride a great portion of his writings-he than our author has expressed. We by no means says: "Our reading is mendicant and sycophantic. subscribe to the following sentence. The measure In history, our imagination makes fools of us, plays of truth it expresses-and so well expressesus false. Kingdom and lordship, power and es- bears but a small proportion to the whole truth. tate, are a gaudier vocabulary than private John "All men plume themselves on the improvement and Edward in a small house and common day's of society, and no man improves. Society never work but the things of life are the same to both advances. It recedes as fast on one side as it gains the sum total of both is the same. Why all this on the other. It undergoes continual changes: it deference to Alfred, and Scanderberg, and Gus- is barbarous, it is civilized, it is christianized, it is tavus? Suppose they were virtuous; did they rich, it is scientific; but this change is not amelio

Or this" Why should we make it a point to disparige that man we are, and that form of being assigned to us? A good man is contented. I love and honor Epaminondas, but I do not wish to be Epaminondas. I hold it more just to love the world of this hour, than the world of his hour. Nor can you, if I am true, excite me to the least uneasiness by saying he acted and thou sittest still.' I see action to be good, when the need is, and sitting still to be also good. Epaminondas, if he was the man I take him for, would have sat still with joy and peace, if his lot had been mine. Heaven is large, and affords space for all modes of love and fortitude. Why should we be busybodies, and superserviceable? Action and inaction are alike to the true. Besides, why

ration. For everything that is given, something | Constantinople. What does Rome know of rat or is taken. Society acquires new arts and loses old lizard? What are Olympiads and Consulates to instincts. What a contrast between the well-clad, these neighboring systems of being?" reading, writing, thinking American, with a watch, a pencil, and a bill of exchange in his pocket, and the naked New Zealander, whose property is a club, a spear, a mat, and an undivided twentieth of a shed to sleep under. But compare the health of the two men, and you shall see that this aboriginal strength the white man has lost. If the traveller tell us truly, strike the savage with a broad axe, and in a day or two the flesh shall unite and hea as if you struck the blow into soft pitch, and the same blow shall send the white to his grave. The civilized man has built a coach, but has lost the use of his feet. He is supported on crutches, but loses so much support of muscle. He has got a fine Geneva watch, but he has lost the skill to tell the hour by the sun. A Greenwich nautical almanac he has, and so being sure of the information when he wants it, the man in the street does not know a star in the sky. The solstice he does not observe the equinox he knows as little; and the whole bright calendar of the year is without a dial in his mind. His note-books inpair his memory; his libraries overload his wit; he insurance office increases the number of accidents; it may be a. question whether machiner does not encumber; whether we have not lost by refinement some energy, by a Christianity (entenched in establishments and forms) some vigor of wild virtue. For every stoic was a stoic; but n Christendom where is the Christian?"

A French critic has designated Emerson the American Montaigie, struck, we presume, by his independence of mainer, and a certain egotism which when accompanied by genius is as attractive, as it is ludicrous winout that accompaniment. An English reader wil be occasionally reminded of the manner of Sir Thomas Brown, author of the "Religio Medici." Like Sir Thomas, he sometimes startles us by a curiosity of reflection, fitted to suggest and kindle thought, although to a dry logician it may seem a mere futility, or the idle play of imagination. Of course this similarity is to be traced only in single and detached passages; but we think we could select several quotations from the American writer which should pass off as choice morsels of Sir Thomas Brown, with one who was familiar with the strain of thought of the old Englishman, but whose memory was not of that formidable exactness as to render vain all attempt at imposition. Take the following for an instance :—“I hold our actual knowledge very cheap. Hear the rats in the wall, see the lizard on the fence, the fungus under foot, the lichen on the log. What do I know sympathetically, morally, of either of these worlds of life? As long as the Caucasian manperhaps longer-these creatures have kept their council beside him, and there is no record of any word or sign that has passed from the one to the other. I am ashamed to see what a shallow village tale our so-called history is. How many times we must say Rome, and Paris, and

should we be cowed by the name of action? "T is a trick of the senses-no more. We know that the ancestor of every action is a thought. The rich mind lies in the sun and sleeps, and is nature. To think is to act."

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Or if one were to put down the name of Sir Thomas Brown as the author of such a sentence as the following, are there many who would detect the cheat? I like the silent church, before the service begins, better than any preaching. How far off, how cool, how chaste the persons look, begirt each one with a precinct or sanctuary; so let us always sit. Why should we assume the faults of our friend, or wife, or father, or child, because they sit around our hearth, or are said to have the same blood?"

But Emerson is too original a mind to be either a Montaigne or a Sir Thomas Brown. He lives, too, in quite another age, and moves in a higher region of philosophy than either of them. The utmost that can be said is, that he is of the same class of independent, original thinkers, somewhat wayward and fitful, who present no system, or none that is distinctly and logically set forth, but cast before us many isolated truths expressed in vivid, spontaneous eloquence.

This class of writers may be described as one whose members, though not deficient in the love of truth, are still more conspicuous for their love of thought. They crave intellectual excitement; they have a genuine, inexhaustible ardor of reflection. They are not writers of systems, for patience would fail them to traverse the more arid parts of their subject, or those where they have nothing new, nothing of their own to put forth. The task of sifting and arranging materials that have passed a thousand times through the hands of others, does not accord with their temperament. Neither are they fond of retracing their own steps, and renewing, from the same starting-place, the same inquiry. They are off to fresh pastures. They care not to be ruffling the leaves of the old manuscript, revising, qualifying, expunging. They would rather brave all sorts of contradictions and go on, satisfied that to an ingenuous reader their

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