and, from the impulses of a
kind heart, the dreams of poets, and the speculations of philosophers,
fashions a society in which there is neither envy, anger, ambition,
nor avarice, but where, amid Arcadian joys, all men live in peace
and happiness. He was compelled to think because he had need to act,
--to make real laws for real societies. To do this, he did not
meditate upon human frailty and perfectibility; he did not attempt
to frame institutions carefully graduated to suit the dissimilar
dispositions, faculties, and desires of men. In the spirit with
which he had observed the phenomena of Nature in order to discover
the laws which produced them, he inspected the social phenomena of
his country to learn the laws by which it might be governed. He
studied the processes by which a few hamlets, hastily built upon a
savage shore, had grown into powerful communities,--by which the
heirs to centuries of bitter recollections had been made to forget
the jealousies of race, the enmities of party, the bad hatred of sect,
and united into one brotherhood for the accomplishment of a common
and noble purpose. He took man as he found him, and believed he could
govern himself because he had done so. He endeavored to give
symmetry to the system which was already established. It is not
strange that in this way he arrived at rules of policy, and assisted
to put in operation a government, more perfectly adapted to our wants,
more nicely adjusted to our strength and our weakness, giving freer
opportunity to individual effort, and more firmly establishing
national prosperity, better able to resist sedition or foreign
assault, than any which painful toil has created, or the imaginations
of the benevolent conceived, from the days of Plato to those of
Fourier.

In our next number we shall allude to certain questions, raised by
Mr. Randall's book, connected with the early politics of the country;
and we shall likewise undertake the more pleasing task of describing
the domestic life and the character of Jefferson.

* * * * *

A PRISONER OF WAR.

Ruegen is a small island, and its chief town is named Ruegen also.
They are both part of Prussia, as they were in 1807, when Prussia
and France were at war. At that time Herr Grosshet was burgomaster,
and a very important burgomaster, it should be understood,--taking
in proof thereof Herr Grosshet's own opinion on the subject.
According to the same high a