at dangerous one of revolution, toward
which Mr. Buchanan and his advisers seem bent on driving them. But the
reform must be wide and deep, and its political objects must be attained
by household means. Our sense of private honor and integrity must be
quickened; our consciousness of responsibility to God and man for the
success of this experiment in practical Democracy, in order to which the
destiny of a hemisphere has been entrusted to us, must be roused and
exalted; we must learn to feel that the safety of universal suffrage
lies in the sensitiveness of the individual voter to every abuse of
delegated authority, every treachery to representative duty, as a
stain upon his own personal integrity; we must become convinced that
a government without conscience is the necessary result of a people
careless of their duties, and therefore unworthy of their rights.
Prosperity has deadened and bewildered us. It is time we remembered
that History does not concern herself about material wealth,--that the
life-blood of a nation is not that yellow tide which fluctuates in
the arteries of Trade,--that its true revenues are religion, justice,
sobriety, magnanimity, and the fair amenities of Art,--that it is only
by the soul that any people has achieved greatness and made lasting
conquests over the future. We believe there is virtue enough left in the
North and West to infuse health into our body politic; we believe that
America will reassume that moral influence among the nations which
she has allowed to fall into abeyance; and that our eagle, whose
morning-flight the world watched with hope and expectation, shall no
longer troop with unclean buzzards, but rouse himself and seek his eyrie
to brood new eaglets that in time shall share with him the lordship of
these Western heavens, and shall learn of him to shake the thunder from
their invincible wings.

* * * * *

LITERARY NOTICES.

_Library of Old Authors_. London: John Russell Smith, 1856-7.

Many of our older readers can remember the anticipation with which they
looked for each successive volume of the late Dr. Young's excellent
series of old English prose-writers, and the delight with which they
carried it home, fresh from the press and the bindery in its appropriate
livery of evergreen. To most of us it was our first introduction to the
highest society of letters, and we still feel grateful to the departed
scholar who gave us to share the co