massive foundation to rest upon. The finest spirits generally tabernacle in the firmest bodies. Intellect and imagination are ever in the closest alliance in the most rugged men. Luther, Galileo, Lord Bacon, Shakspeare, and Spenser; Jeremy Taylor, Milton, Barrow, Howe, Donne and Cowley, blended immense subtilty and vigor of thought with great copiousness and fervor of imagery. The abundance of their animal spirits fed the fires of their genius. They carefully read life, books and men; but with equal zeal and constant habit, they communed with flowers, trees, gardens, running streams, soaring mountains, the deep-meaning sky of day, and night's vast congregation of stars. They loved nature, and, Actæan-like, saw her virgin beauty in secluded haunts, but were not, Actæan-like, devoured by their own remorseful thoughts, as by ravening dogs. They were too manly in their constitution and culture to succumb to effeminate indulgence; too healthy in the tone of their spirits to pant away life in aimless toils. Tholuck, one of the greatest and best scholars of Germany, recently assigned three reasons for not visiting the United States: First, the rifeness of our mob spirit, which might endanger his life; secondly, the prevalence of dyspepsia, so peculiar to our students; and thirdly, the want of promenades in our villages and towns.' He recognizes the want of innocent recreation among us, the source of many evils which all wise men have occasion to dread.

Again, manly education will insure to the country useful patriots. Men educated in the abstract only, like elegantly-made sun-dials in the shade, may always be fitted for use, but are always useless. Knowledge that is real is practical and useful. It invigorates the mind, and stores it with a profusion of apt allusions and striking illustrations; it exalts the sense of duty, refines affection and ennobles the whole man. Erudite dullness may make a learned orator, but it is the prerogative of animated wisdom to inspire a speaker of consummate power and skill. Draco was smothered by the garments thrown in honor of him; and so the mere book-worm, as Robert Hall has said, may lay so many books on his brains that he cannot think.' Philological pursuits are of great importance, but Sir William Jones has declared that Languages are the mere instruments of learning, and should not be confounded with learning itself.'

We estimate the value of a machine not by the glitter of its material or the elegance of its finish, but by its utility in a working. state. A man is valuable not on account of what he has acquired but for what he can perform. We are not in the least disposed to undervalue universities, and other associations of learned men; but it is hard to forget that for nearly all the ripe scholarship and patriotic eloquence of the day, we are seldom indebted to the cloisters for the principle, and never for powerful execution. One must be forcible in order to be influential; he must gain an ascendency over men by penetrating their views, modifying their wishes, and impelling their minds. Eloquence, fresh from the fount of feeling and full

of practical wisdom, must fill the soul of the speaker, revealing her presence in the purity, power and grandeur of his thoughts :

'SHE clothes him with authority and awe,

Speaks from his lips, and in his looks gives law :
His speech, his form, his action full of grace,
And all his country beaming in his face.'

Delicate exotics may flourish best in the close air of secluded conservatories; but the saplings that are to become cedars of Lebanon and oaks of Bashan, require free space, sunshine, and copious rains. It is impossible to know the world through the medium of books alone. The theories of a recluse may be the profound disquisitions of a philosopher, while his practical conduct is that of a fool. It was said that Luther awoke all Europe from the sleep of the libraries.' How did he do this? Not by calling around him in solemn seclusion the masters of scholastic subtleties and defunct erudition, but by plunging into the great heart of his country through the living tones of their homely vernacular. He might have debated in Latin till the day of doom, and been triumphantly answered by accomplished champions at Rome in Latin better than his own. But he moved to his great work, not

'to the Dorian mood Of flutes and soft recorders :'

He took not the oaten pipe of the classic muse to arouse the world from superstitions and ignorance worse than death; he grasped the iron trumpet of his mother tongue, and in clear, familiar, but startling tones, blew a blast of thunder that shook the nations from Parthenope to the Orkneys. Such men are demanded by the emergencies of our own day. The airy refinement of Pope's verse, and the exquisite but humid beauty of Addison's prose, will not impress the obtuse nerve of modern mind. We need a style formed by the aggregate of higher qualities; the epigrammatic force of Young, the lucid majesty of Chatham, and the gorgeous effulgence of Burke; a style in which the most vivid poetry shall animate ponderous prose, as momentum gives cannon balls their efficacy; a style formed and employed by healthy, liberally educated men, whose teeming stores of knowledge are patriotically rendered conservative of the public weal.

Finally, we must foster manly education that we may have virtuous citizens. The pursuit of physical energy in agricultural avocations, or otherwise, contributes to the general perfection of our complex being as much as a problem in Euclid or a page in Homer. Agriculture was ever highly esteemed by the ancients in general, and by the Romans in particular; indeed, it was almost the only science among them which produced writers truly original. It is remarkable that the names of many of their most distinguished families, such as Fabius, Lentulus, Piso, Cicero, and many others, were taken from agriculture and from vegetables. It was while they remained a robust, bucolic people, that they were eminently

fitted for all sorts of stupendous enterprise. In vigor and constancy under privation their legions surpassed all military bodies that were ever organized. One of the finest scholars of modern times, the late William Roscoe, in a letter to a friend, spoke as follows of the relation of agriculture to personal happiness: This mode of life gave health and vigor to my body, and amusement and instruction to my mind; and to this day, I well remember the delicious sleep which succeeded my labors, and from which I was again called at an early hour. If I were now asked whom I considered to be happiest of the human race, I should answer those who cultivate the earth by their own hands.' Let me here subjoin a beautiful epitaph on an old farmer, written by a renowned Greek poet;

EARTH to thy flowery bosom take in love
Thy ancient worshipper! He led the grove
Of olives down yon valley's gentle side;

'T was he who taught the crystal stream to glide
With its low murmur round this bowery vine,
And wreathed its mossy fount with eglantine.

"T was his pale hand that crowned the hill with corn,
And planted yon peach orchard; where at morn

The winds grew fragrant! Strew thy earliest bloom,
And hallow thy old lover in the tomb.'

The improvement of mind and muscle is an imperative duty, and the source of pleasures of a high order; but all that is deathless in the nature, and sublime in the destiny of the soul, proclaims the infinite importance of moral education. Industry is a duty and so is devotion, and both in their place and proportion, equally reflect honor on the name and creation of GOD.

We especially need men of manly force and principle who shall be the proprietors and cultivators of our national domain. The period is not very remote since those who cultivated the soil of England were slaves, bought and sold with the cattle which they tended. Sir Walter Scott, in his graphic description of one of this class, after depicting the other peculiarities of his costume, adds a trait which speaks volumes as to their condition: One part of his dress only remains, but it is too remarkable to be suppressed; it was a brass ring, resembling a dog's collar, but without any opening and soldered fast round his neck; so loose as to form no impediment to his breathing; yet so tight as to be incapable of being removed, excepting by the use of the file. On this singular gorgit was engraved in Saxon characters: Gurth, the son of Beauvulph is the born thrall of Cedric.' ' We want no born thralls' in America, and to prevent it we must have every where men of masculine bodies and minds; men acting under the highest motives for the holiest ends.

Labor, severe and wholesome labor, is the great primary law of our being; and the absence of it is a blessing only so far as the fruits of a high state of civilization are snatched from voluptuous appetites, and become consecrated to moral improvement. Every thing connected with wealth, leisure, and refinement should tend to the development and manly cultivation of mankind. The glory of a

state consists not in its effeminate luxuries but in its hardy sons; not in its decorated monuments, but in its disciplined men.

'WHAT constitutes a state?

Not high-raised battlements, and labored mound,
Thick wall, or moated gate;

Not cities proud, with spires and turrets crowned;
Not bays and broad-armed ports,

Where, laughing at the storm, proud navies ride;
Not starred and spangled courts,

Where low-browed baseness wafts perfumes to pride;
No! men! high miuded men,
Men who their duties know,

But know their rights; and knowing, dare maintain;
Prevent the long-aimed blow,

And crush the tyrants, while they rend the chain;

These constitute a state,

And sovereign law, that state's collected will,
O'er thrones and globes elate,
Sits empress, crowning good, repressing ill.'

ELM.

Cincinnati, Sept., 1847.

OCTOBER AT DOBB, HIS

FERRY.'

ON THE HUDSON RIVER.

THERE is an emblem in this peaceful scene;
Soon rainbow colors on the woods will fall,
And autumn gusts bereave the hills of green,
As sinks the year beneath its cloudy pall.'

'I'LL give to thee a silver pound
To row us o'er the ferry."

WITH what a holy quietude the days
Of autumn fill these lovely solitudes;
So peaceful are they, and so deeply hid
From the intrusion of the busy world,
Mid the religious gloom of rocks and trees,
Which to the soul impart a kindred awe:
That thou may'st here forget the cares of life,
And in the inmost silence of thy heart
Approach the throne of THE INVISIBLE,
Who dwelleth not in temples made with hands,
But chooseth rather his abiding place

In the gray forests, through whose many roofs
The tempests roll their anthems. Thou may'st sit
Upon this bank of moss, and while thine eye

Hath many a glimpse of stream and snow-white sail,

No ruder sound shall break upon thine ear

Than the sweet voice of waves that lose themselves

In their own music on the pebbly beach,

Or the low murmur of the wind that stirs

Amid the boughs above thee. Thou shalt look

O'er waters gaudy with inverted trees,

Beneath whose spreading screens of twinkling gold
Lies the blue image of the hollowed sky
Amid the silver currents; trooping clouds,

Of dazzling whiteness, and a fairy mass

W. G. CLARK.

Utica, October 1847.

Of dancing leaves painting the glassy stream
With gold and crimson. Nooks, through which the light
Streams with a yellow radiance from above,
Shall woo thee to look o'er their mossy banks
Upon the silent picture; but when he
Who keeps the ferry hath unmoored his boat,
The scene below shall change into a mass
Of rocking silver. Then the mimic waves,
Clapping their little hands in glee, shall chase
Each other swifter in the mossy coves,
And fall with softer music on the ear;

A music mingled with the plunge of wheels,
And with the red-sleeved boatman's barcarole,
(A strange wild mixture of old songs and psalms)
Half-sung, half-whistled, as he steers across
The glittering river.

With how soft a light

The golden sunshine, glimmering through the haze
And misty softness of the noontide, bathes

The blood-red leaves that strew without a sound
The bier of Autumn! It is like the sad
Sweet memory of those who now are saints,
Redeemed and blessed, in holy Paradise;

A memory which is the almoner

Of thoughts more sweet than music, and more bright
Than moonlight when it rocks upon the breast
Of the lulled ocean. Thou shalt conjure up
Amid the depths of these hushed solitudes
Bright visions filled with faces of old friends
Long since departed to the silent land;
And tender recollections of the past,

That fill the eye with tears; yet not less sweet
Shall be the sound of breezes in the beech,
Or quiet chirp of birds upon the shore;
Nor less serene the glassy sky that bends
Above the glassy river.

Haply, then,

When thou hast felt the beauty of the scene,
And so hast grown in love with the red woods
That redden the still waters, thou shalt turn

In after time, to bless the memory

Of these secluded haunts, well loved of KNICK.,
Who beareth through the busy thoroughfares,

And mid the uproar of the marts of men,

Bright recollections of serenest days

Passed in the company of rocks and woods;

The talk of friends; the moon's wave-broken track,

The sloop-lights gleaming o'er the Tappaan Zee;

The laugh of children, faces of fair girls,

Made ruddy by the dance on summer nights
And all that constitutes the joy of life,

With that which Nature gives in stainless skies,

The pomp of colored woods, and in the calm
Religious stillness of her holy fanes,

Where she doth preach unto the heart of man,
With every season, some morality,

Some truth made evident in all her works,

Of the Divinity which animates,

And lives and moves in all created things.

H. W. RoCKWELL