of whom, if pride were ever admissible, every female might be proud, who, at the early age of seventeen, was cut down by the hand of violence, was familiarly acquainted with this language. The New Testament was a part of her daily reading; and she generally read it in the original Greek, and with the same facility with which she read the English.

The French deserves only the third place among foreign languages, as an auxiliary to English literature. It is a help, however, which is by no means to be contemned; for the English is indebted to it for many of its words, and the French has received a high degree of cultivation by the labors of many distinguished scholars, and embodies much valuable literature and science.

Languages, like nations, have had their rise, their glory, and their decline. The sun of English literature has risen in peculiar brightness, has ascended the heavens in majesty, and is shedding its meridian splendor on the world. Who would not regret to behold it descending toward the horizon, even though it should scatter brilliancy over a hemisphere in its setting glory? It is interesting to inquire what are the dangers of corruption to which the English language is exposed, and how they may be avoided.

The greatest danger of corruption to which it is exposed is innovation. In the earlier state of a language, when it is progressing in improvement by the labors of genius and taste, innovation is the prime source of its advancement. But when a language has received the finishing touch of improvement, and become substantially settled, innovation is to be steadily frowned upon. With the models of Grecian sculpture and architecture before him, where is the artist who will pretend that excellence is to be attained in these fine arts by innovation, and not by immitation? There is nothing more beautiful than simple beauty itself. The Italians attempted to improve the Corinthian, the most elegant order of Grecian architecture, by combining the beauties of the Ionic and of the Corinthian; but in the judgment of all good taste, they marred what it was their purpose to adorn.

When a language becomes substantially settled, innovation must be considered a kind of literary treason. A language becomes settled when no authors may be expected to arise in it, more distinguished than those who have already arisen. In this view of the subject, must not the English language be considered as settled? When will more illustrious authors arise, than those who have already shed a glory on English literature?

There is, indeed, cheering proof that the English language is not on the decline. The later writers in every department of literature and science are not inferior to their predecessors. Campbell, and Rogers, and Montgomery, and Scott, and Byron, and many others, have adorned the fields of poetry. Reid, Stewart, and Brown, are scarcely inferior to Locke in metaphysical author

ship. Webster, as a lexicographer, is no unworthy successor of the illustrious Johnson. If natural philosophy and physical astronomy have made little advancement since the time of Newton, other departments of phsical science, and particularly chemistry, have been signally advanced; and the latter has been beautifully illustrated by Sir Humphrey Davy, and a multitude of others. In fictitious writings, no former author, for beauty of description and elegance of language, will bear a comparison with Sir Walter Scott. And for a pure, classical, and elegant style, nothing in the whole range of the English classics will surpass that of Washington Irving, the American. Theology has been elegantly as well as forcibly illustrated by Blair and Campbell, Porteus and Dwight.

(To be continued.)

ADVERSITY.

How the young fancies of an ardent mind
Leap over cold realities and find

Brightness and bliss unsullied, unalloyed,
In everything:-0, how are they destroyed,
When life, in all the soberness of truth,

Blackens before them! how the hopes of youth
Sicken and fade before the chilling eye
Of a cold world, that feeds on misery!

How droops the untaught heart, when first it learns
Those it had loved were heartless; when it turns
Towards a friend with warm and frank embrace,
And meets suspicion in that altered face;
When a loved voice, on the astonished ear,
Pours forth hard censures, and rebukes the tear
It raised with bitter taunts; when harmless acts

Are laid before it as condemning facts,
That prove it worthless; but howe'er it be
In human thought-whatever man may see,
Or feign to see, of wrong in thee, do thou
Stand firmly with a clear and open brow;

Repose on thine own thoughts; whate'er men say,
If thou canst calmly think, and sleep, and pray
With deep sincerity, there's nought to fear
Beyond the sufferings heaped upon thee here;
Let human kind despise thee as they will,
Droop not, sad heart, thy God protects thee still.

PROGRESS OF MODERN LIBERTY.

AMONG the many greater changes which time hath wrought upon the world, the variations of language, and even the gradual modifications in the meaning of single words, are not without importance. An inquiry into the undoubted connection between the manners and the languages of nations, would be a subject of interesting and fruitful investigation, not only to the philologist, but also to the philosopher. And perhaps it might be discovered, that the precise idea intended by certain terms, would be no mean criterion of the progress of society, and the state of national advancement. The word tyrant, even in its native tongue, subsequently varied from its primary signification, when

'The tyrant of the Chersonese

Was freedom's best and bravest friend.'

Terms which were invented as the symbols of some of those characteristics of human nature which would seem to be unalterable, do not always convey the same associations with which they were originally invested. Glory now means something more truly noble and elevated than it expressed, even in those days, when it formed the common impulse of marshalled empires. It includes a wider and a widening range of exertion and attainment, and excludes no class without its scope. It is no longer the monopoly of heroes. Once, like the the Cimerian shadows revealed to the vision of Ulysses, it was too often but a voiceless apparition, until it had tasted of the blood of the victim; now, it might be unrecognised in the thunders of battle and conquest, while its "still, small voice," would be heard in the mild accents of benevolence and religion.

Liberty, in these latter days, means something more than was celebrated in the Eleutherian festivals, or exemplified in the political institutions of the States of Greece, and the Commonwealth of Rome. Among the ancients, it was either an impulse or an abstraction. It ranked, in their mythology, with those minor influences not deemed altogether worthy of claiming worship, under the tutelary care of some particular deity. The love of liberty, as a national impulse, was strongly characteristic of many of the states of antiquity, and was generally nothing more than a modification of natural liberty, varied according to the genius and condition of each particular people. The Athenians were eminently distinguished for its cultivation as a popular passion. It served as a tie to bind them to community of action, in times of emergency; it was the theme of splendid declamation and beautiful philosophy; it soared in their poesy with the ample pinions of the "Theban Eagle ;" it lived in the heart of Plato, and dwelt upon the lip of

an Aspasia; it sat beneath the academic groves, and rambled within the delightful precincts of the garden; but it was only an enthusiasm. It entered not into their governmental institutions. Like their own beautiful emblem of immortality, it hovered around the dead mass it could not animate. It was not a principle, and had no rule over the conduct of that " fierce democracy. Look to Athens at the summit of splendor under her Olympian Pericles! How much practical liberty entered into those fierce vibrations between the wild vicissitudes of popular will, and that mad infatuation which impelled a people, whose distrust and jealousy of the power and honesty of their magistrates formed a prominent national trait, to confide to one man the boundless and irresponsible authority, which could with impunity subject to the fatal ostracism a Cimon and a Thucydides, and boldly strike a successful blow at the time honored and venerated Areopagus? The Athenians possessed power, but they did not enjoy liberty.

The Spartan constitution, though popular, can scarcely be entitled free. It was merely a system of military organization, and the customs of Lacedæmon were but the exercises of a camp. The first welcome which greeted the new-born infant, when placed upon the votive shield, "H Tv † ¿лì táv,—— either this, or upon this,-indicated the whole duty of the citizen. Their government was a formula of discipline, and the provisions and policy of the laws were concentrated to this single point. Their scheme of education was mostly physical, and excluded learning. Instruction was confined to obedience, endurance, and that which constituted the end and aim of Spartan existence, how to conquer or to die in battle and it was only in regard to these objects, that a knowledge of their inexorable code was inculcated upon the youthful mind, simultaneously with the primary objects of instruction, cunning, vigilance, and activity. Their constitution was combined of various and discordant elements. It was democratic, inasmuch as the supreme authority was assumed to be inherent in the people, and as social equality was universally established; it possessed the monarchical feature of the kingly office and in the anomalous magistracy of the Ephori, exercising supreme jurisdiction over king, court, and populace, it included the most odious form of a tyrannical oligarchy.

In a national point of view, both Athens and Sparta enjoyed political liberty in its full extent; but their municipal institutions, although originating in the people's choice, did not embody the true principles of freedom. Neither can they be said to have acquired civil liberty, in its proper acceptation, because in the one, free agency was merged in the severe discipline ordained by cruel laws, administered by a despotic aristocracy, and in the other, there was no protection against the arbitrary influence of the popular favorite, or the still more tyrannical exercise of popular ex

citement. There was no security against either anarchy or usurp

ation.

In the Roman republic security never accompanied freedom; and without security liberty cannot exist. The people never possessed the safeguard of fixed and permanent laws. When they acquired power, they could not retain it, but yielded both authority and freedom to the usurper or the traitor of the hour. Impulse could always hurry them with equal facility to a change of masters or of principles. Their revolutions attest that they were guided, not so much by a steady love of liberty, as by the sudden excitement of the moment. Thus, the avenging dagger of the violated Lucretia struck down the tyranny of the Tarquins; the stern sacrifice of poor Virginia auspicated the downfall of the Decemviri; and Cæsar's "wounded vesture" shut out from the "kind souls of his countrymen the memory of five hundred years of independence, and blinded them to the hope of future freedom.

That liberty which is acknowledged in our age and country is not only a component part of the social system, but it is the fundamental principle upon which our whole political structure is established. It is no fortuitous accession to our institutions, but their very origin and cause. It is no fluctuating popular impulse, but the invariable principle which has led us on from generation to generation, and whose guidance we must follow to the final consummation which a peculiar Providence seems to promise.

It is believed that the practical freedom of the present age has little community with the visionary liberty of antiquity; that it is distinct in its nature, its origin, and its tendency. We must look for its original elements to the genius and customs of that wonderful race which overran Europe for a period of several centuries, and eventually superseded the declining empire of Rome. These tribes have all been ranked under the generic designation of Germans. The enervated inhabitants of beautiful Italy, and even the philosophic Tacitus, would not believe that a people could abide in the impenetrable forests of Germany-a land" asperam cœlo, tristem cultu adspectuque, nisi si patria sit ;" they therefore considered them the indigenous offspring of the soil. Their precise origin has never been ascertained, but this supposition we know to be error. Antiquarian speculation has wandered into a maze of wild conjecture, in search of the probable derivation of this extraordinary people. History does not declare the country of their emigration; but we know that they must have originally seceded from the dense but nomadic population which swarmed over the primitive plains of Senaar. It is probable that they were descended from the Scythians, and certainly their migration lessened not that dauntless and independent spirit which so bravely resisted him who vanquished all, and "sighed for other worlds to conquer." Tacitus observes, that in their ancient songs, the only annals of