, and right. But how is this? 'Lo! a foreigner has
landed on our shores.' Well; what then? We also should be foreigners in
Europe. 'Yes; but he bears the honorable appendage of Lord, or Sir, or De,
or Di, or Von, or Don.' Happy, meanwhile, thrice happy the youth whom his
titleship will allow to treat him; blessed, triumphantly blessed, the Miss
whose charms have warmed into life the cold gaze of my Lord Highbred, or
Monsieur De Nonchalance. And oh! beatified beyond all rapture the doting
mother, who in her ripened and expanded miniature begins to realize her
dreams of 'young romance,' and to hope by connection with a family more
lineally descended from Adam than her own, to obtain a rank

'Whose glory with a lingering trace,
Shines through and deifies her race!'

Truth, every word truth--satire most justly bestowed; and before
relinquishing this general theme, let us ask the reader to admire with us
the cognate remarks of a writer in the last number of the 'North-American
Review' upon the importance of a _Literature_ which shall be distinctive
and national in its character, and not a _rifacamento_ of the varying
literatures of various nations: 'The man whose heart is capable of any
patriotic emotion, who feels his pulse quicken when the idea of his
country is brought home to him, must desire that country to possess a
voice more majestic than the roar of party, and more potent than the whine
of sects; a voice which should breathe energy and awaken hope where-ever
its kindling tones are heard. The life of our native land; the inner
spirit which animates its institutions; the new ideas and principles, of
which it is the representative; these every patriot must wish to behold
reflected from the broad mirror of a comprehensive and soul-animating
literature. The true vitality of a nation is not seen in the triumphs of
its industry, the extent of its conquests, or the reach of its empire; but
in its intellectual dominion. Posterity passes over statistical tables of
trade and population, to search for the records of the mind and heart. It
is of little moment how many millions of men were included at any time
under the name of one people, if they have left no intellectual
testimonials of their mode and manner of existence, no 'foot-prints on the
sands of time.' The heart refuses to glow at the most astounding array of
figures. A nation lives only through its literature, and its mental life
is immortal. And if we have a liter