the American people attach to what is said and done at Washington. The most stupid private citizen becomes an oracle, as soon as he is elected a member of Congress. And then at the public house, in steam-boats, in private circles, what a yawning, tedious, dull business is this doomsday discussion of politics, that fills every mouth, and apparently every thought! How painful to be obliged to discuss in the everlasting common places this hackneyed theme! But we soon see, that, dull and spiritless as it is to us, it is all in all to the people. Who thinks of literature in the scramble of the outs to get in, and push the ins out? Who can afford space in his thoughts for literature, that can converse at home and abroad about nothing but speeches, elections, caucusses, and the miserable and paltry intriguings of ambitious demagogues? Can the still voice, the quiet, but satisfying and elevating thoughts of literature, make their way in a community which hungers only after the husks of politics, which feeds on nothing but long dull speeches? While this rabid appetite pervades our public, we can never expect to have a higher national literature, than that of newspapers.

True, the broad and general principles of legislation and government furnish an elevating and interesting study and theme; but certainly far inferior, in these respects, to those of morals and literature. But it is inconceivable to us, how men, claiming to be high minded and reflecting, can find the interest, which they seem to possess in discussing the unimportant and passing politics of the day, the last speech, or the result of the last scramble and intrigue. Lyceums and debating societies and the thousand engines of the boasted march of mind, instead of remedying this morbid appetite, seem to us to have increased it. They furnish another valve for the escape of the gas of ambition and self-importance. All their discipline, influence and excitement flow finally into the dead flat sea of politics.

But we are admonished to bring to a close remarks, which, true and important as we feel them to be, may seem tinged with querulousness. So long as it remains the predominant opinion, that England alone can furnish good books and settle fame; so long as publishers can deluge the country with republications of English books without copy right; so long as every boy, too lazy to cultivate the land, and too stupid to earn a subsistence in any other way, can purchase a press on credit, and become editor, critic, poet, politician, moralist, philosopher, and divine, and add another furious political newspaper to the thousands that deluge the country; so long as the people have no taste for any higher discussions, than those of politics, or idle polemical debates, which are only another form of the acting of the political appetite, so long we shall remain without a national literature.

We close by suggesting, what seems to us, one grand and effi cient mean of raising such a literature from the dust of poverty, neglect, or what is worse, the mildew of puffery, and the suffocating lumber of pamphlets, poems, souvenirs, and family libraries. It is, that the men of talents, the gifted minds, in great numbers spread over the surface of our country, who are now either indolent, or wasting their powers in catering for the coarse appetite for politics, should feel, that they have a ministry, a function, a high responsibility, and a call from Providence to exercise it; that they should shake themselves from the dust, rise above the petty jealousy of fearing to make the first advances, and that they should know each other; for they will then esteem and respect each other. Real endowment, true genius, always has been, as it now is, utterly incompatible with the baseness of envy. Let him who feels this venom burning in his bosom, be aware that the mark of Cain, of a stinted and mean mind is upon him, and know that he has neither part nor lot in this matter. Not only would the highest and most valuable friendships thus be formed, but in every civilized country, such a union must have, and would have an immense influence. It is shyness, distance, jealousy, perhaps worse, a reckless and proud disregard of the responsibility attached to the possession of talents, which cause that our literary men, dispersed over a vast surface, do not know each other, have no concert, or worse, attempt to thwart and belittle each other, and thus lose all their legitimate influence upon opinions, manners, and morals. Could they join hands, could they act in concert, they would soon find, that self-love and sociality were the same, that in proportion as they acted in concert for the public welfare, they would actually strengthen each others hands, and benefit each other.

To be able to form and pass an accurate judgment upon books, is neither an easy or common endowment. The common estimate seems to be, that the three essential ingredients to form a reviewer are impudence, malignity, and self-consequence. Horace said truly, Haud ex quolibet ligno Hercules fit. Few people possess the tact to discriminate the true from the seeming, eloquence from verbiage, and the real ability to write from the plodding mechanical dullness, which measures out sentences with the exactness of ma.chinery, wit from flippant malignity, sophistry from sound logic, and talent from self-confident emptiness. Of those who possess some of these attributes, a great portion exercise them marred by some obliquity in the brain, envy, devotion to clanship, and want of integrity to rise above interest, ill temper, or the solicitation of friends. If a review could be established, capable, fair, impartial, dignified, and adequate to anticipate the judgment of posterity, it would be, in various respects, an invaluable tribunal.

Merit accompanied by industry, would be lifted up from the dust, and a veto would be put upon the thousand worthless books and publications, which by the efforts of clanship, and the concurrence of fortunate accidents, are now palmed upon the public, not only depraving the public taste, rendering the mind callous to the interests of literature, and indifferent alike to bad and good books, but squandering in this way the very means that ought to be applied to the purchase of good books. Such a review would act with all possible indulgence and gentleness towards the nerves of those who have no other pretensions to interest than its irritability. But above all, aware that the heartfelt praise of a discriminating mind is of all cordials the most exciting to a similar mind, such a review would not bestow the poor, stinted, measured praise of a pinched and little mind, but would be honest, warmhearted, and amiable, awarding that sort of praise, which a generous mind puts forth, when reading what pleases him in the privacy and among the inmates of the parlour. Have we such a review? Let the public feeling decide. Might such an one be established? Unquestionably, for the talent is not wanting. Why do not such reviews exist? Because reviewers have not magnified their office, nor thought it necessary to bring to it that honesty and impartiality, without which a judge in a matter of dollars and cents, would be despised. All that has been thought requisite for a reviewer, is to consult his interest, and be gracious to friends, and terrible to enemies.

WHEN THOU HAST LEFT THE LIGHTED HALL.

BY THE LATE MRS. DUNCAN.

When thou hast left the lighted hall
To seek thy chamber dear,
And Music's sad and dying fall,

Still lingers on thine ear.

When the soft moon-ray pours a stream,

Of silver light o'er thee;

And woos thee with a pleasant dream

Of magic memory.

When thou art gazing on that light,

We both have loved so well;
And solitude, and peaceful night,
Bring back my last farewell.

Then in thy calm and tranquil rest,
Sweet sister, think of me;

And keep kind thoughts within thy breast,
Unworthy, though I be.

THE politician who declared that he would rather be the author of the national songs of a people than their laws, uttered a truth amply justified by experience. The sway of either over a community is great, as it is peculiar and distinct, but each widely differing in the influence they exercise upon mankind. Enactments originating from the artificial state of society, play alone upon its surface, and serve rather as a check to restrain actions, than an impulse to create them. Songs, on the contrary, owing their existence to the very source of feeling, imagination, have a strongly contrasted effect; and, forming an outlet to those wanton revellings of the spirit—which, as actions, the sternness of public order would decisively repress-must ever retain a powerful hold upon the affections of a people; and, entwining themselves around the heart, are cherished as a consolation, under the inevitable privations which national measures may occasion. It would thus be a task, not less curious to the philologist, and interesting to the philosopher, than fascinating to the man of letters, to trace out, through the long vicissitudes of history, the effects produced by the deep workings of this pervading propensity-to develop the marked national

peculiarities it has occasioned, and the mighty political features which its latent, but all-powerful influence, has modified by its strong and continual action on the most potent sympathies of human nature.

In France, perhaps more than any other European country, is this wondrous power of imagination over life more particularly observable; and, there, its effects may be most successfully traced. In most other nations, the consolidation of empire weakened the potency of" the divine art of song," or entirely obliterated the living influence, all powerful in the barbaric times, when impulse supplied the actions, which spring from duty in more refined society. But in France, the peculiar organization of the people-their gay, happy temperament, ever suggesting a ready escape into the bright worlds of fancy and imagination, from the dull realities of life-has made its inhabitants particularly susceptible to the influence of the spirit of song.

A history of the effects produced upon the mind of this nation, by the celebrated subject of this article, would be itself sufficient proof to establish the truth of this remark. There is no people more easily excited on the subject of national glory, or who are more tenacious of their nation's honor, than the French; and possessing, as they do, a genius particularly alive to the influence of fancy, in its gaudiest and most brilliant colorings, it is not to be wondered at if at a time when that nation shook Europe to its centre, or, during later convulsions, when the minds of the people were wrought up to the highest pitch of excitation-the spirit of song, pourtraying their former deeds of glory, or picturing a glowing perspective as the reward of their present achievements, should have exercised an influence at once mighty and irresistible; or when a revolution had passed away, and the nation was beginning to reap the good or evil consequent upon its consummation, how powerful would be the exercise of song in holding up a retrospection of the past, or in goading the restless spirits of the dissatisfied into new and untried exertion. As it is ever easy to create an excitement in a rabble, so is it a matter of little difficulty to increase that fervor, when raised, from the mere inanity of feeling to bold and violent exhibitions of popular tumult. It is upon the minds of the common people, therefore, more particularly, that the eloquence of song exerts its influence; it speaks to them in a language, clear, decisive, and always interesting; they are freed from the exercise of their own actual judgment, and in alluding to principles which, as inherent truths, need only to be hinted at to be awakened, the heart is touched, the sensibilities aroused, and the man is carried away by an irresistible influence. It is to the canaille of France that we particularly allude; and it was by identifying himself with them, and addressing himself particularly to their susceptibilities, that Beranger, in the strength of his genius, has exercised a power, greater and more universally extensive than all the legal enactments which policy could have devised. He speaks to the people, not as individuals having a distinct interest, but as a common nation, influenced by the same causes, and reaping the same effects: he addresses them as Frenchmen, and apples himself to those peculiarly sensitive points of the national character, which are strong in the heart of the meanest peasant, and more easily excited there, than when existing in the bosom of the proud and noble of the land. His keen satire, continually levelled against the administration, and one main