son.

house, and submitted monthly to the examination of the inspectorso f posts, that the police may know not only who are travelling in the country, but whether the peasants and postmasters have complied with the law, in providing for the travellers. Two post wagons were soon got ready, the rudest of all vehicles I have ever seen, excepting only the Lithuanian cart-without springs, coarsely put together, and so narrow that it was a sort of torture to make two persons sit in it side by side. The Russian kibitka is a well-made and handsome wagon in compariTwo small horses were attached to it, not with traces, but poles tied to the collars, and ropes used or reins. But the postillion, a barefooted boor, with long hair hanging about his neck, and covered with an old hat that had, to all appearance, seen service for years on the same head, with whose growth, however, it had unfortunately not grown, was an active boy, and the horses were of good mettle, and away we flew, at a rate that would not have disgraced the most impatient coachman on an English road. The road was excellent-all the Swedish roads are so, smooth and hard, the soil being favorable, and care taken of them; macadamized roads could not be better than these in summer. It takes much from the pleasure of travelling here, that it is the practice of this country, instead of enclosing the fields from the road, to run the fences across it, enclosing their land without any reference to it whatever, except that they make a gate for travellers to pass. There are of course innumerable gates to be passed in a day's ride, and much consequent interruption to the travelling. If there are boys living near the gates, they run to open them for you, in hopes of receiving a skilling from the travellers. There were perhaps a dozen gates across the road in this day's ride; and it afforded us no little amusement, to see the boys, half of them without hat or shoes, running as fast as their little legs could carry them, striving who should get first to the gate, and claim the skilling. Whoever travels by the road, must provide himself for this purpose, with abundance of skillings, small copper coins, about the size of a cent; and such seems almost the only purpose for which coin of any description is indispensable here-paper money of all denominations being the medium of exchange, and seeming nearly to have banished the precious metals from the country.

The termination "köping," pronounced chuping, significs market, or market town; Linköping is therefore Lin market. It is a small town, containing some four thousand people, and remarkable principally for its gymnasium, and its cathedral, the largest and most beautiful in the kingdom, after that of Upsala. There are some handsome houses and gardens; and, altogether, it is of the better class of country towns in Sweden. To conceive the idea of such a town, imagine streets without side-walks, and with the roughest pavements of round, unequal stoneshouses, on the line of the street, with plain, red or white walls, of logs or plaster, one story high, and steep roofs of red tiles inclining to the street-and between the houses, gardens or stables, or unsightly red fences. Sauntering along the principal street, I happened to stop at the

window of a print-shop, where my eye fell upon two views in New York and two in Philadelphia. What a transition such a sight produces in an instant I forgot every thing around me, Linköping and Sweden, and felt myself to be in my own land.

July twenty-seventh. This morning we passed through the Roxen, and the long, narrow lake of Asplängen. After leaving Asplängen, the canal led us, through rich meadows, where mowers were at work, and peasant girls following them, throwing the hay, to Söderköping, a small, dilapidated town. Three miles beyond Söderköping, we entered, at eleven o'clock, an arm of the Baltic; ran down a long bay; passed under the walls of the old castle of Stegeborg, famous in Swedish history, now in ruins, and entered the Baltic. The eastern coast of Sweden is girt by an infinite number of small rocky islands, so numerous and extending so far off, one behind another, that the open sea is not visible; and the water, defended from the ocean swell, is as smooth, as undisturbed by storms, as if it were a river. All the afternoon we coasted along northward amongst these islands, and followed up an inlet of the Baltic, by Trosa, to Södertelje. We had a pleasant breeze from the sea, and the weather, like all that we have had from our leaving Gottenburg, such as a traveller would most desire-clear, not so warm as to be oppressive, and a gentle, cooling breeze, so that we have passed on deck nearly every hour of the day. There is a delicious excitement about such a mode of travelling, in a country where every thing is new and interesting, that none but the traveller can know.

Towards evening we saw a steamer in the offing, which approached us, and proved to be a government steamer, with the Crown Prince Oscar and his family, from Carlscrona, going to one of the summer palaces on the coast. With what means we had, our captain fired a salute, which was immediately returned. The Swedes of our company manifested much enthusiasm for the Crown Prince: they spoke of both himself and his wife in the most affectionate terms. She is the daughter of Eugene Beauharnais, and, by the concurrent testimony of all I have heard speak of her, is a most amiable and excellent woman.

July twenty-eighth. We started before sunrise, and by a canal of a mile in length entered the lake Mälaren, on which Stockholm is situated. The scenery of this lake is of extraordinary softness and beauty; a vast number of little islands, (twelve hundred, it is said,) not ragged or barren, like the Baltic islands which we saw yesterday, but covered with trees to the water's edge, seeming like masses of foliage just risen from the lake. A morning among these islands is a pastime; so thick are they on all sides, rising beyond each other, that we seem always to be hemmed in some narrow bay; but the boat advances, and the land opens before and closes behind us as by enchantment. Swiftly our boat bore us past these islands, and at seven o'clock the towers of Stockholm were in sight, gleaming above the waters.

THE DUTY OF THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY.

PROSPERITY is, proverbially, a more severe test of character than adversity. True of individuals, this maxim has a still more emphatic applicability to political parties. And it well behoves the Democratic party of our day, in its present hour of triumph and pride, to lay its moral deeply to heart.

The machinery of Party, like all other human creations, is not only a very imperfect construction, but in many respects of its operation is attended with unavoidable evil which goes far to counterbalance even the good which it alone affords the means of effecting. This is a subject which urgently claims the most anxious consideration of the American patriot; and he would indeed well merit the highest meed of gratitude from his country, who should succeed in pointing out and impressing on the public mind any practicable method-not of wholly averting, for that is essentially impossible-but of mitigating, the serious moral evil which now evidently results from the too high and violent working of our great system of party machinery. We have neither space nor time to dwell upon this topic here; but as it has been a subject of much reflection with us, we will on an early occasion take advantage of the propitious opportunity afforded by the present state and prospects of our public affairs, to endeavour to direct attention to it more particularly than has hitherto been attempted.

For the present we must take things and the times as we find them; but, while reaping all the advantages afforded by this mighty engine of party combination, in securing the ascendancy of principles which we deem essential to our country's true greatness and happiness, we should be no less solicitous to avoid as far as possible their concomitant evils and dangers. For this purpose, the present juncture of political affairs suggests the duty of exceeding care to guard against the acknowledged injurious tendency, upon a triumphant party itself, of the possession of so complete and decisive an ascendancy as the democratic party has now so incontestably attained.

We have no great faith in professional politicians, whether self-styled "Democrats" or "Whigs," when too long entrusted with too securely established a power. There are many individual exceptions on both sides-many men of pure, disinterested and high-minded patriotism, even among the prominent leaders on both sides of our party array, though that sentiment is by no means one of the leading characteristics of our modern civilization—yet neither certainly possesses any advantage over the other in exemption from the infirmities of our common nature;

and to neither can be entrusted the possession of too much power. whether upheld by one system of machinery or another, whether by the organization of standing armies or standing parties, without a fatal liability to degeneration from the pristine purity of their earlier principles and professions. We by no means intend to place our two parties on a par in this respect. Very far from it. Without designing here any odious personal comparisons, we are satisfied that, as a general rule, a Whig politician is much less safely to be entrusted with power than a Democrat, from the different directions of the natural tendencies of their respective systems of opinion. In the one case-assuming both to be equally honest, personally, at the outset a much greater distance, than in the other, has to be overcome in passing into that state of political dishonesty which is so often the common character of both, together with many more obstacles to such a transition, internal and external. In the one case the way is long and steep; in the other, rapid and sloping. In a democracy a democrat alone can be free, frank and fearless; the politician of different fundamental faith must of necessity be reserved, deceptive, and sophistical, to woo the favor of that majority which in his own inner heart he distrusts and despises. The former bears with him always the unswerving magnet of a fixed principle by which to guide his course; the latter, pursuing ever a delusive expediency, trims his sails to every breath of popularity. The former, trusting to the eventual rectitude of the sober second-thought of the people, has every inducement to openness, simplicity, and political virtue; the latter, necessarily conscious, to a greater or less extent, of a certain hollowness of inconsistency within, between his true faith and his compulsory professions, becomes early habituated to the crooked paths of intrigue, and corrupt party management; and believing often sincerely that he and his party are but deceiving the people for their own good, his "public conscience" is too apt to ride smoothly at anchor by the elastic cable of that pernicious maxim of the old Jesuitism, that the means become consecrated by the end.

Trusting, therefore, little to the class we have termed professional politicians, there is still a wide difference in the degrees of confidence with which we would expose those of our two respective parties to the ordeal of the possession of power; and we deem it at the present period a just subject of sincere congratulation to the country, that it is now happily relieved froin all danger of the possession of the administration of the federal government of our noble Union passing into the hands of the "professional politicians" of the late and present Opposition.

But let not the Democratic party itself sit now contentedly down, under the impression that all is safe and well; and that, the danger past and the contest over, nothing remains but the tranquil enjoyment of the victory won. Above all, we would admonish our own friends, the politicians of our own party, not to sink into that pleasing delusion. This now is the danger against which we would take this occasion of warning our own political friends-we refer to that class of persons, distributed over

the whole Union, who, stimulated by an honorable ardor in the cause of the democratic principles at stake, may have distinguished themselves by the zeal and efficiency of their political exertions during the late long struggle, so as to entitle themselves to be regarded in some sense as the leaders of the great popular movement, in their respective local spheres and degrees of influence. After the achievement of such a general triumph as is now manifesting itself in favor of our party, the class of persons of which we speak naturally remain at the head of the general party organization, of which it becomes a strong interest on their part to keep alive the activity, and to retain the general management. This class of men are exceedingly liable to yield to the obvious temptation of directing the influence which thus naturally attaches to their position, in one form or another, to the gratification of their own personal interests or ambition. It is but too natural, that after leading on, or fancying themselves to have been leading on, the "rank and file" of the masses through all the hot fatigue of the day, they should afterwards desire to sound a halt in the mighty movement, and to lie down by the pleasant pastures and cooling streams of the Promised Land of party ascendancy which they have gained. Now, such was by no means the object of that movement, to place any set of individuals in those positions of party distinction and control, though that supposition is an error into which they are but too apt to fall. Nor is it a less error to imagine themselves to have been the authors of the movement, before which they have happened to be borne along, either because their own impulses happened to coincide with its direction, or because they early possessed a sagacious presentiment of its probable course. We confess that we feel very unwilling to see our party-a generous, honest and high-minded party-fall again under that control and management of a class of local party leaders, whether in or out of office, which we have so often before seen to be the case, and which is so apt to degenerate into a state of things very little, if at all, preferable to an open domination of Federal principles. Such a class are very liable to become not less hostile to all progressive improvement, to all further development and practical application of democratic reform, than the most conservative bigots of the opposite school of politics. They are the first and the sternest to frown upon what they designate as the impracticable ultraisms of the more ardent and single-minded votaries of the very principles to which they have owed their own elevation. They become the most bitter in the persecution of those from whose unseasonable agitation of such topics they apprehend a disturbance of that calm and consolidated party ascendancy of which they are reaping, or hoping to reap, all the fruits of personal aggrandizement. They gradually crust themselves over the party, with an influence upon it paralysing to all the generous simplicity, fervor, and truth, natural to democratic principles; until at last they ruin by corrupting it, and eventually, after the lapse of a greater or less term of years, the healthy vitality of the main body itself is roused from its long lethargy