Human life! How is our every sympathy entwined with each emotion awakened by its contemplation! On every side it is putting forth manifestations to the observing eye of its energy and its beauty. Are we dwellers in the country? From that lowroofed cottage a youth is going forth with lofty heart to do and dare on the great battle-field of manly adventure. He has given ear to a father's counsel; he has knelt to receive a mother's blessing; he has smiled at the fears and regrets expressed by younger or tenderer hearts around him, for a sanguine spirit urges him on, and he sees, already, fortune and honors awaiting him in the distant city to which his eager footsteps tend. Not till the hour of parting has come and passed does he feel how heavy the chain he drags who goes forth for years from all he loves on earth; not till the stately-branching elms which overhang the dear spot have. waved their last mute adieus to his backward glances; not till the stream which was the companion of his boyish pastimes has bent away from his rigid course and buried itself among wooded hills, does he feel that he has shaken off the companionships and supports of his youth, and is utterly alone. Now nerve your quivering heart, young adventurer! Summon every thought of hope, and pride, and shame, and press sternly onward, for a feather's weight might almost suffice to dash all your high resolutions, to chase away the dreams of hope and ambition, and send you back, an early penitent, to that lowly home which never seemed half so dear before.

Are we dwellers by the sea-side? Here the sailor is bending the white canvass for a voyage, it may be, around the world, Before he shall again drop anchor in the haven which he deems his home, he may from his vessel's deck gaze on the peaks of the Andes, the sulphurous flames of Kirauea, or may thread with his bark the perilous windings of the forest-mantled Oregon, may survey the porcelain towers of Canton, or the naked site of Troy, whose very ruins have vanished, leaving no monument of their existence, save in Homer's undying song.

Here, too, the emigrant is bidding adieu to the ungenial land of his birth and his love, and, with his household gods around him, is

seeking, on a distant shore, a soil on which his hopes may expand and flourish. Then is sadness, then is anguish in the parting hour; the tree most carefully transplanted must leave too many fibres in its native soil; and the life-long dweller in some secluded valley who first finds himself confronted with a thousand leagues of raging brine, across which lies the way to his unknown future home, may well recoil and shudder at the prospect. But the hoarse order to embark is given and obeyed; the last adieus are looked from streaming eyes; the vessel swings slowly from her moorings; the young look out in wonder on the bleak waste of stormy waters, and turn inquiringly to those who are, perchance, as young in this hour's sensations as they. And so wears on the passage; and, at length, amid new scenes, new toils, anxieties and troubles, the pilgrim finds that care rests its eternal burden on man wherever he is found, that earth has no more an Eden. What recks it? The same blue heaven bends lovingly over all the children of men. New scenes, new hopes, new prospects speedily dim the memory of keenest disappointments, of deepest regrets; and the heart transplanted sends out its tendrils in every direction, and learns to bloom and grow again. And thus do all of us, each in his appointed sphere and season, open new chapters in the great volume of human life.

But let us not contemplate only individual aspects. This life of ours has grander proportions, if we can but widen the sweep of our vision so as to reach its far horizon. Those daily acts, those common impulses, which, viewed individually, and with microscopic or with soulless gaze, seem insignificant or trifling, take a different aspect if regarded in a more catholic spirit. Those myriad hammers which, impelled by brawny arms, are ringing out their rude melody day by day, contributing to the comfort and sustenance of

man,

those fleets of hardy fishers now chasing the whale on the other side of the globe to give light to the city mansion, and celerity to the wheels of the village factory,—those armies of trappers, scattered through the glens of the Rocky Mountains, each in stealthy solitude pursuing his deadly trade, whence dames of Lon-. don and belles of Pekin alike shall borrow warmth and comeliness,

-let us contemplate these in their several classes, unmindful of the leagues of wood, or plain, or water, which chance to divide them. Readily enough do we perceive and acknowledge the grandeur of the great army which some chief or despot assembles and draws out to feed his vanity by display, or his ambition by carnage; but the larger and nobler armies, whose weapons are the mattock and the spade, who overspread the hills and line the valleys, until, beneath their rugged skill and persevering effort, a highway of commerce is opened where late the panther leaped, the deer disported, is not theirs the nobler spectacle, more worthy of the orator's apostrophe, the poet's song? Let us look boldly, broadly out on nature's wide domain. Let us note the irregular yet persistent advance of the pioneers of civilization, the forest conquerors, before whose lusty strokes and sharp blades the century-crowned wood-monarchs, rank after rank, come crushing to the earth. From age to age have they kept apart the soil and the sunshine, as they shall do no longer. Onward, still onward pours the army of axe-men, and still before them bow their stubborn foes. But yesterday, their advance was checked by the Ohio; to-day, it has crossed the Missouri, the Kansas, and is fast on the heels of the flying buffalo. In the eye of a true discernment, what host of Xerxes or Cæsar, of Frederick or Napoleon, ever equalled this in majesty, in greatness of conquest, or in true glory?

this is an inspiring truth,

The mastery of man over nature, which we must not suffer, from its familiarity, to lose its force. By the might of his intellect, man has not merely made the elephant his drudge, the lion his diversion, the whale his magazine, but even the subtlest and most terrible of the elements are the submissive instruments of his will. He turns aside or garners up the lightning; the rivers toil in his workshop; the tides of ocean bear his burdens; the hurricane rages for his use and profit. Fire and water struggle for mastery that he may be whisked over hill and valley with the celerity of the sunbeam. The stillness of the forest midnight is broken by the snort of the iron horse, as he drags the long train from lakes to ocean with a slave's docility, a giant's strength. Up the long hill he labors, over the deep glen he skims

the tops of the tall trees swaying around and below his narrow path. His sharp, quick breathing speaks his impetuous progress; a stream of fire reflects its course. On dashes the resistless, tireless steed, and the morrow's sun shall find him at rest in some far mart of commerce, and the partakers of his wizard journey scattered to their vocations of trade or pleasure, unthinking of their night's adventure. What has old romance wherewith to match the every-day realities of the nineteenth century?

WAR WITH FRANCE. — J. Buchanan.

FRANCE has been placed before the world by her rulers in the most false position ever occupied by a brave and gallant nation. She believes herself to be insulted; and what is the consequence? She refuses to pay a debt now admitted to be just by all the branches of her government. Her wounded feelings are estimated by dollars and cents; and she withholds twenty-five millions of francs, due to a foreign nation, to soothe her injured pride. How are the mighty fallen! Truly it may be said the days of her chivalry are gone. Have the pride and the genius of Napoleon left no traces of themselves under the constitutional monarchy? In private life, if you are insulted by an individual to whom you are indebted, what is the first impulse of a man of honor? To owe no pecuniary obligation to the man who has wounded your feelings; to pay him the debt instantly, and to demand reparation for the insult; or, at the least, to hold no friendly communication with him afterwards.

The only question with you now, is not one of substance, but merely whether these explanations are in proper form. But in regard to the United States, the question is far different. What is with you mere etiquette, is a question of life and death to them. Let the president of the United States make the apology which you have dictated, let him once admit the right of a foreign government to question his messages to Congress, and to demand explanations of any language at which they may choose to take offence, and

their independent existence as a government, to that extent, is virtually destroyed.

We must remember that France may yield with honor; we never can without disgrace. Will she yield? That is the question. She must still believe that the people of this country are divided in opinion in regard to the firm maintenance of their rights. In this she will find herself entirely mistaken. But should Congress, at the present session, refuse to sustain the president, by adopting measures of defence, should the precedent of the last session be followed for the present year, then I shall entertain the most gloomy forebodings. The father of his country has informed us that the best mode of preserving peace is to be prepared for war. I firmly believe, therefore, that a unanimous vote of the senate in favor of the resolutions now before them, to follow to Europe the acceptance of the mediation, would, almost to a certainty, render it successful. It would be an act of the soundest policy, as well as of the highest patriotism. It would prove, not that we intend to menace France, because such an attempt would be ridiculous, but that the American people are unanimous in the assertion of their rights, and have resolved to prepare for the worst. A French fleet is now hovering upon our coasts; and shall we sit still, with an overflowing treasury, and leave our country defenceless? This will never be said with truth of the American Con

gress. If war should come, which God forbid, -if France should still persist in her efforts to degrade the American people in the person of their chief magistrate, we may appeal to Heaven for the justice of our cause, and look forward with confidence to victory from that Being in whose hands is the destiny of nations.

POPULAR EXCITEMENT IN ELECTIONS.

G. McDuffie.

I Not only maintain that the people are exempt from the charge of violence, but that there is a tendency to carry the feeling of indifference to public affairs to a dangerous extreme. From the