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what in other nations is but a minimum in society, becomes a maximum here. He who has nothing, upon the pledge of his faith, thus becomes something at once. The promise to pay' is thus converted

' into the power to have ; and the question of the loaner of money is not, 'Is he rich ?' but 'Is he prompt ? is he capable ? is he honest ?' which are pledges of faith of more importance than actual wealth. Credit thus becomes a republican agent, and levels society upward at once. But aggregated credit, association, is an agent far more plenipotent for republican action. It solves at once the mysterious destiny of a republican democracy.

As my English friend was revelling in the intoxicating associations of his glorious Westminster, I pushed upon him this train of thought. True, we have no Gothic piles of antique grandeur, for we bide our time; but we hesitate not to undertake tasks that olj England herself would stagger under now, with centuries of age upon her head, and the wide Asiatic world at her feet. We have no aristocracy, and never can have one, till a revolution changes our laws, and re-models our society ; but we can have all the blessings attendant upon their concerted action, without any danger at all. The castles, the cathedrals, the towering fortifications, they create, we do not want; for our concerted energies are needed and used, in clearing the wilderness, in threading its rivers with the steam-boat, or else in linking the river and the lake, or the sea, or the canal, or in saving time that is precious, by a locomotive upon a rail-road. Union, with us, effects all of good an hereditary aristocracy can effect over sea. A democracy, by such an union, turns its vast energies into a monarchical agency at once, but without hereditary power; a responsible agency, to be yielded whence it came, the moment its task is wrought. So, when the people of New-York willed the Erie canal, that corporation of the people called the State, fulfilled that will, and the work was done. Thus this unity of republican action is not only capable of great undertakings at home, but it uses the American lever of credit to bring the money of foreigners to do our work. The fact is now as clear as day, of almost all our public works, that foreign money not only builds them, but they are actually built by foreign hands. The Irishman does the work, and the Londoner finds the plenipotent dollar. American mind forms the conception, and directs the labor. It is very true, that at present, utility is the main-spring of American action; but ornament, beauty, and the arts, follow in its train; and the agency that thus suddenly metamorphoses the wilderness of America into a cultivated country, if not a garden, can create a gallery of arts, or the most gorgeous structure of the architect. It would be easier to build a Westminster, than to create a state. The work of the Pyramids was nought, compared with the work of our fathers, who subdued the howling wilderness, alive with savages, to their own will.

The extraordinary spectacle our republic now presents, as it brings to bear the American lever of human action upon mankind, is as novel as it is amazing, to the other nations of the world. The Roman republic, whose sovereignty was on the Capitolum, brought the Thracian, the Gaul, the Briton, and the African, to Rome, and its campagna, to build its temples, its aqueducts, its Pantheons, and its mausoleums; but it dragged them there as slaves, and poverty was in their train; and what they did, shortened in nothing the distances magnificent of her encumbered empire, or yielded any return. The world rushes, of its own free will, to this our Rome of the West, not to be subject to bondage, but to the enlivening influence of emancipation from what bondage it has. The faith of man in man, which is the elementary principle of all our governments, federal, state, and municipal, has developed in business a system of associated credit, that enables us to command European capital, and to hurry on the natural progress of our new world. We thus exhibit to mankind the amazing spectacle of a people but just settled in a wilderness, taxing the men and money of all Europe, for the execution of its public works; while resting upon the exercise of the higher faculties of man, his contriving, thinking, and directing powers, Americans, as masters, in fact, make Europeans willingly do their work. Thus the world labors for us; and this is, in part, the solution of the mystery of our wonderful progress. Never before did a nation, without arms, thus exercise the power of intellect over the human race ! The rëaction of this mind upon Europe, strengthened by ocean steam navigation, through letters, visits, and example, we have not time to dwell upon here; but we solemnly believe it must end in an assimilation of the

governments of the earth, and in an equality of interests among mankind.

What of change the American lever of faith in man, of credit of man to man, has wrought upon the geography and society of our new republic, every body sees, who has attended to our history. It borrowed money of Europe, in the revolution, to beat back the myrmidons of Europe. The genius of this system of credit was personified in that wonderful man, Robert Morris, who, by it alone, fed and clothed the whole American army. It purchased for us the great valley of the Mississippi. It first sent the American flag to China and the Mediterranean. Without it, commerce flags in an hour. The spindle and the trip-hammer move upon it. The trowel and the hod are lifeless without its agency. The Erie canal was built by it, and every public work is upon the same foundation. The first locomotive was started by its impulse. In short, the moment it is destroyed, the republic has upon it the paralysis of despotism; for credit is the electric power of republicans, and the great agrarian of the age, who, as it builds up fortunes, demolishes them also, and thus. keeps society nearly upon that level, without which a republic cannot long exist.

We have not thus dashed off a hasty eulogium upon a well organized system of credit, for the purpose of eulogy alone, but to add to it some brief remarks upon the temperament, the character, the impulses, of our novel society, thus created. We are not English, though we speak English ; for the stately grandeur of English society, its timidity and cautious formality, are hardly known here; but we are more French, with much of the excitability, the sprightliness, and the power of adaptation to all circumstances that people have. The rusb of the whole intellect of the country to politics, that unfortunate mental diversion of its high power, is — but for a moment; for we are now in the crisis - making us a nation of political hypocrites, without the manliness to express and defend a principle, when it unpopular; but the intellect which is now abandoning politics, and

devoting itself to the elegant pursuits of agriculture and literature' adorned by the illustrious examples of an Irving and a Channing, will soon put the nation on the right road of moral independence; for fame, it will be seen, is more easily obtained by the pen, the pencil, or the chisel, or even by the plough, than in the now overwhelmed paths of the politician. Of character, in our state of American and European fusion, and in the conflicting elements of northern and western and southern society, we can hardly be said to have any at all, that is fixed. Our republic is floating upon a chaos of these elements, the only land-marks of which are our state corporations. New-England character, however, is the great predominating principle, that seems to be subduing others to its power, by the force of immigration, and the better instruction of its immigrants. The press of the country, that powerful engine of American action, is in New-England hands. The professions, generally, are theirs. The manufacturers, and the artizans, and the commerce, are theirs, as a general remark, which all, as agents of action, powerfully predomi. nate over the public mind. We are, also, what foreigners will scarcely believe, an eminently poetical people. Our country is a moving romance of history, and our countrymen are romancers in action, and knightserrant, often, in principle. The pen is not yet our instrument of action upon posterity, we know, but the pick-axe is. What Mind conceives, it writes not upon paper, but scrawls upon

the earth. Our imagination wraps itself in powder, and acts upon the rock and on the cliff'; now tunnelling the hill, and now blowing up the mountain. Steam is our spirit of poetry. We are Cyclopean writers, with the earth for our tablet, and Vulcan and Mulciber are our ideal gods. The Irishman is our Canova. The shovel is our chisel. The wheel-barrow is the American broom. Steam-boats are our naiads and our nymphs. Gold is our glory. We are not men fat and full, as other nations are; with the round portly bulk of the Briton, the stoutness of the German, or the ruddiness of the man of Italy; but lank and lean men, of but little bones, less flesh, much of muscle, and all blood; spirits in frail tenements of clay; born for a short life, but to live years and years in that life. One of us is two men, thus. Our real population doubles that of our numbers, by the intense activity of our lives. Our bond of union, that faith of man in man, of which we spake, consolidates our power for action. Our lever to lift the old world is the same American engine of faith, of confidence, of credit, which, as our course inspires it, carries power with it. When Romulus was founding the Roman Empire, he went upon

the Palatine Hill, and with his face eastward, whence came the father of man, consulted the auguries of the heavens. So did the Washingtons, the Adamses, the Jeffersons, the Hamiltons, the Jays, with their eyes upon the human races of the eastern world, admonished and taught by their examples; and then, invoking heaven, bequeathed to us the principles of liberty and union, in the constitution. If, with our faces eastward, consulting the destinies of the human race there, and invoking the guidance of heaveni, we hold up, by our example, to an admiring world, the glorious illustrations of this liberty and union, westward the star of empire will take its way; and that Palatine Hill, on which Romulus stood, will be hidden in that dazzling blaze of history, kindled up on the rock of Plymouth by our puritan fathers.

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THROUGH the dim rooms of this deserted house,
I'll wander lone. Oh, what a spirit broods
Above these shattered walls ! – sad, sad and mute,
Yet eloquent of kindness. Here were heard
Words of sweet import, and the gentle song:
Here where I stand, hard by the threshold, worn
With hourly-passing feet, were seen bright looks,
That beamed a rapturous welcome; here the arms
Of the fond husband clasped th' expectant form,
Sinking with joy to see him home-returned ;
Here children sprang to kiss their sire beloved,
And here, foretokens of the warmth within,
Greeted the guest, who entered, free as air.
Oh! let me pause and dream that, even now,
I go to meet the happy; to caress
Dear, innocent children; to exchange my thoughts
For intellectual coin of nobler worth ;
To look around on quiet household shapes,
Each lovely in itselt, but oh, most fair,
Surrounded by the atmosphere of home!
Alas! the wind, that with a dreary sound,
Sweeps through the corridor, like warning voice,
Uttered by Desolation, chills my heart,
And a deep sense of solitude weighs down
The lifting plumes of Fancy, as 1 view
The real scene !

Open, familiar door!
This was the cheerful parlor; this the hearth,
Round which, in narrowing circle, as the night
Grew darker, and the gale of winter rose,
Sate sire and matron, maiden, boy, and child.
How lonely now!- deserted, desolate!
Not even a chair for rest; gone, gone -- all gone!
The dust obscures the windows; woven far
Along the cornices, the spider's web
Hangs in fantastic falls, as if to mock
The memory of the rose-wreaths that were there,
When some young bride appeared in white array.
Oh, for a magic mirror, whence the past
Might be reflected !--every joyous scene;
But not the mournsul, not the weeping group
Around the coffin, robed in solemn black.
Answer, ye silent walls ! - was mirth or grief
Predominant within ? Which saw ye most
Cheeks pale with anguish, or hilarious smiles ?
I bid you speak; and yet, with conscious fear,
I turn aside, lest deeper gloom, perchance,
Should shroud the vacant room as with a pall.

Farewell! thou crumbling tenement, farewell!
Thou hast outlived thy century of years ;
But a few days, and thou shalt sink for aye,
And fragments of thy structure shall supply
The poor man's fire; so that, in passing off
For ever, thou shalt be, as in thy prime,
The bounteous almoner of warmth and cheer.
Farewell! I fain would stay awhile to muse
On all the changes which have rolled around,
Since thou wast founded in this pleasant spot;
But such thoughts make me grieve; and there are themes
Too rife with real sorrow, in my heart,
For me to sigh above the mouldering past.
I too, though young in years, have seen decay —
Decay more sad than thine! Deep in the grave
Are buried early hopes, with early friends;
Fortune has been my foe, and love my bane;
And o'er my spirit sweeps the desolate dirge,
Like the complaining wind, whose requiem-tones
Wail o'er the wreck of this once happy home!

P. B.

CRIME IN THE OLDEN TIME;

OR, THE FIRST CAPITAL CONVICTION UNDER THE FEDERAL CONSTITUTION.

BY THE AUTHOR OF JERRY GUTTRIDGE'S REFORMATION.'

SAIL O!' cried young Walter Jordan, from the mast-head of the fishing schooner Betsy, as she was ploughing her way, before a strong east wind, across Casco Bay, in the then province of Maine, and heading for Falmouth, now Portland, harbor.

Where away?' called out skipper Jordan, who was standing at the helm, and watching the boys, as they were preparing to take a reef in the main-sail.

Three points on our weather quarter,' said Walter.

'I see her,' said the skipper; come down and hand me the spyglass.'

Walter hastened down, and brought the spy-glass to his father. 'Steady the helm!' said the skipper, as he took the glass, and elevated it toward the distant vessel. She's a stranger,' he added, after taking a brief look through the glass, and by them colors she's got flying there, I guess she wants somebody to pilot her in. Come, bear a hand; get a double reef in that main-sail, before the wind tears it all to pieces. And we must try to hold on a little, too, and let that vessel come up.'

The boys soon had the main-sail under close reef, and the little Betsy was yawing off, and coming to, and tilting over the waves, like a lone duck that waits for its companions to come up. The strange vessel was nearing them quite fast. She proved to be a schooner of about thirty tons' burthen; and coming down under as much sail as she could possibly bear, she was soon alongside the Betsy. When she had come up within speaking distance, skipper Jordan hailed her. 'What schooner is that?' shouted the captain of the fisherman. The schooner Rover, Captain Bird,' was the hoarse, loud reply. 'Where you from?'

'From the coast of Africa.'

'Where you bound?'

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'To the nearest American port,' said captain Bird, who had now approached near enough for easy conversation. Any port in a storm, you know,' continued the commander of the Rover; and I think we have a storm pretty close at hand. What port are you bound to, captain?'

I'm bound into Falmouth,' said captain Jordan, which is the nearest port there is; and it is n't more than ten miles into the harbor. If you a' n't acquainted with our coast, you jest follow in my wake, and I'll pilot you in.'

The captain of the Rover thanked skipper Jordan for his politeness, and kept his vessel in the wake of the Betsy, till they entered the beautiful harbor of Falmouth. The town of Falmouth formed one side of the harbor, and Cape Elizabeth the other; and as captain Jordan belonged to the latter place, after making a graceful curve