the shadow of a fort, and hoe with their guns stacked in the field.

13. We object altogether to the levying of a tariff for revenue merely, as unequal and unjust. On the free-trade assumption that all duties raise the price of the articles on which they are levied, and so operate only as a tax on the consumer, we deny the rightfulness of raising revenue in this mode, since the man who has no property to protect, and the woman who has no voice in the government, may often be compelled to contribute as much towards the support of the government as a Rothschild or Jacob Astor. If a tariff is not beneficently protective, it ought not to exist at all.

14. We do not propose nor advocate absolutely prohibitory duties. We would adjust the tariff so as to give to every branch of home industry a clear and undeniable advantage over the rival industry of foreign nations in the supply of our own markets, but leave it so that novel and rare fabrics might be moderately introduced, to stimulate invention and improvement in our own artisans, and contribute to the national revenue. Such limited importations may also be serviceable in correcting any momentary tendency to excessive prices by combinations among our own producers of any article.

HALF way through any tolerably full edition of Mr. Coleridge's poems may be found under "Ode to Dejection" this bit of music :

We receive but what we give,
And in our life alone does Nature live;
Ours is her wedding garment, ours her
shroud;

And would we aught behold of higher worth
Than that inanimate cold world, allowed
To the poor, loveless, ever anxious crowd?
Ah! from the soul itself must issue forth

A light, a glory, a fair luminous cloud, Enveloping the earth:

And from the soul itself must there be sent A sweet and potent voice of its own birth, Of all sweet sounds the life and element!

It is what five out of eight readers of Mr. Coleridge's poems would call very beautiful-running it over but once : two out of the eight would read it twice for a fuller understanding of its merits and we dare say there might be one out of eight who would read it a third time, without any decided impression whatev

er.

Of course this latter reader would be one of the "poor, loveless, ever anxious crowd;" and the first five, among whom we reckon L. Maria Child, who quotes it as the motto of her book, are they from whom "issue forth

A light, a glory, a fair luminous cloud, Enveloping the earth."

Those who had to read twice in order to a fair understanding, would never think of placing it as a motto to a book of letters from New York or any other place; but very ingeniously is it placed on the title-page to letters of a lady who looks out ever from under "a fair luminous cloud" on scenes we are presently to enjoy, all the while her soul sending forth

"A sweet and potent voice of its own birth,

Of all sweet sounds the life and element!" We do not mean to speak too jokingly of a verse of Coleridge's-least of all of an ode which ourselves can run through delightedly in dreamy hours, and call, with heart full, and eyes almost-beautiful! But if we had business on hand and wanted our mind clear of cobwebs, our vision unincumbered by any "forth

issuing glory," our sympathies sound and our whole heart right, we should leave it, with all other Leaves Sibylline, on our shelf. Very likely, if we should think it worth our while to write a book of letters-full of sights and sounds about a great city in the hope of doing the world a trifling service, we should want our mind clear, our view unincumbered by any poetic hallucinations, and our heart, not diseased with a morbid sensitiveness, but sound, healthy, right. Mrs. Child has taken the work out of our hands, and let us see how bravely she has done it.

title. These are letters. There is a And a note in setting out, upon her charm in that word-letters. It is a name to conjure with. If we were ever to take it into our head to write a book, and should wish, as we surely would, to make its sale great, we would call it-what do you think?-Letters from Home! Who in the wide world would not buy Letters from Home? But all letters are not letters. They will understand what we mean, and they only, who have, like ourselves, a little pacquet tied together with a narrow ribbon, now soiled with frequent handling, which they take cautiously and reverently out of some hidden nook, on days of driving tempest or far into the middle of a winter's night when all around are coying with Death's brother, and read them over with such smiles and such tears, such sorrow and such hope, such blessing and joy as no other one of all life's episodes can bring together. But these are not all. What sweet sympathies will not the social experience of another, written down fully, fairly, freely, call out of a sensitive soul! But mindit must be written in letters. Think of Cowper: what a household name is that of Mrs. Unwin! Not through the whole cycle of romance does one woman-name bring such softened memories up as this of that good woman. And Lady Hesketh, and John Johnson, and Samuel Ross, and the Throckmortons,-what a life they live in letters! Think of Scott and his letters, and straightway-if you have a spark of music in your soul

&c.

Johnny Ballantyne and Jemmy, and Constable, and Annie, and Laidlaw, and all the rest, are at your elbow. Letters are not to be read in a crowd, but by one's self, and late into the evening or at dusk. Nor must they be read aloud, but softly and quietly, with the mind free and the heart open. With these thoughts uppermost turn we again to the title before us: -Letters-from New York. A bold preface of the place. A good letter should have a blurred post-mark" canna weel mak out," leaving us doubtful till our wishing eyes catch the first glimpse of the friendly hand running along the top-line in characters, how much plainer than print-New York. And then what-in the matter before us? No address-no kindly word-no care or carissime-no half-line? No, surely these of Mrs. Child's are no real letters. They have only one requisite a careless freeness, how little without the rest!

we

"You ask what is now my opinion of this great Babylon; and playfully remind me of former philippics, and a long string of vituperative alliterations, such as magnificence and mud, finery and filth, diamonds and dirt, bullion and brass-tape, &c. &c. Well, Babylon remains the same as then. The din of crowded life, and the eager chase

for gain, still run through its streets like the

perpetual murmur of a hive. Wealth dozes on French couches, thrice piled, and canopied with damask, while Poverty camps on the dirty pavement, or sleeps off its wretchedness in the watch-house. There amid the splendor of Broadway sits the blind negro beggar with horny hand and tattered garments, while opposite to him stands the stately mansion of the slave-trader, still plying his bloody trade, and laughing to scorn the cobweb laws, through which the strong can break so easily."

Can these things even be, Mr. Mayor,

and

"Overcome us like a summer cloud Without our special wonder?"

And would it not be the part of proper humanity to call upon Mrs. Child at her lodgings (which may be found by the new directory)-and, after sufficient inquiry, to send down a bevy of the new police to make capture of these bloody traders, and test once more their ingenuity in breaking through the cobwebs of the law? Your reputed caution will suggest at once the propriety of observing some degree of secrecy in conducting the manœuvre.

Letter I.-which we have half a mind to call, from sheer vexation, Chapter I.— continues in very much the same rhapsodic vein through its greater half; and then follows on in pretty comparisons of the Battery with Boston Common-of the Past and Present, of the Will and Force

of the Practical and the Ideal. The next opens with new gossip upon parks and trees

"I like," she says, "the various small gardens in New York with their shaded alcoves of lattice-work, where one can eat an ice-cream shaded from the sun. You have none such in Boston: and they would probably be objected to as open to the vulgar and the vicious--(any more, pray, than a thousand two-shilling shows, or eatingplaces?) I do not walk through the world science, literature, music, flowers, all things with such fear of soiling my garments. Let

that tend to cultivate the intellect, or hu

manize the heart, be open to Tom, Dick and Harry,'-and thus, in process of time they will become Mr. Thomas, Richard and Henry. In all these things, the refin ed should think of what they can impart not of what they can receive."-(p. 6.)

utterance of the "

Very good and she has imparted, we fancy, somewhat of her refinement to the poor fellow, lying a sleep, covered with filthy rags" at the bottom of the next page, (the story, we mean)-who, on being awaked, exclaim ed piteously, "Oh don't take me to th police office, please don't take me there! Was there ever a ragged man in New York- not a lunatic-who did such speaking as that? We have a suspicion -a hard one, but a real one-that if the correspondent of Mrs. C. had been by such tatterdemalion, her ears (or his) would have been greeted more likely with the cracking laconism of some such wicked words as these, "D-n the police!" We make our report, not from disrespect to the report of the Letters, but as the more probable one. For the soul-born voice, "of all sweet sounds the element," does so modify the talk of every talking one, the work through, as to destroy individuality, and-we say it with regret-weaken interest.

But we are trifling, and our authoress trifles through chapters two and threeelegant trifles, but "light as air." Let us have something to suggest inquiry; and we find it no further over than on page fifteen.

"It is said a spacious pond of sweet, soft water once occupied the place where

Five Points stands. It might have furnished half the city with the purifying ele ment; but it was filled up at incredible expense-a million loads of earth being thrown in before perceivable progress was made. Now they have to supply the city with water from a distance, by the prodigious expense of the Croton water works. This is a good illustration of the policy of society towards crime. Thus does it choke up nature, and then seek to protect itself from the result, by the incalculable expense of bolts, bars, the gallows, watch-houses, police courts, constables, and Egyptian Tombs,' as they call one of the principal prisons here."

6

The reflection appears to us very unfortunate, inasmuch as the Croton works mete out an infinitely greater, and more accessible, and every way preferable supply of the pure element, to what even half a dozen ponds of however soft or sweet water would afford. Just so little of practical wisdom appears in many of Mrs. Child's occasional remarks, as is manifest in this romantic regret for fresh water ponds, albeit the Croton is spinning its white floods down walk, and street, and gutter at every sunrise. So trustworthily would the Abyssinian prince, or his sister, Nekayah, have dilated upon city economy.

But should we blame an imaginative woman for one of the thousand errors in which taste takes precedence of judgment? We would not, surely, had she not arrogantly and needlessly made the same the vehicle for a mischievous satire upon social policy. If the reflection was unfortunate, the accompanying illustration is even more so. Not only does it fail her rhetorically, but from its very nature exposes the weakness of her logic. Observe her words: "Thus does it (social usage) choke up nature, and then seek to protect itself from the result, by expense of jails," &c.

Now, did it ever occur to Mrs. C., we mean not in perning her illustration, but did it ever occur to her, that our nature does not need to be choked before it is full of depravity and rottenness;-that man is not sweet and pure, but rather the opposite, by nature-for which we beg leave to cite, most unfashionably, that Old Authority-than which, pray tell us, what is higher?

No, no, good Mrs. C., trust us for it: man needs not to be choked into uncleanbut the rather if he is to be choked at all, it should be out of it. It may seem

ness,

trifling, that we use so many words to expose a mere disagreement of terms-unfitness of apodosis to protasis ;—so, however, it does not seem to us; and for reasons we hope to make apparent. Two or three, or even half a dozen times, through the volume, does our pleasant-writing authoress give expression to opinions kindred to that quoted-of the aggressions of society upon the-not rightsbut the dispositions and feelings of the individual. Thus, of the vagabond children at Five Points-in all whose eyes she sees visions of suffering innocence, stricken tenderness, debauched modesty, tearful aspirations-she says: "And this is the education society gives her children-the morality of myrmidons, the charity of constables!" And again on page eight, that "society makes its own criminals;" and again, "When, oh when will men learn that society makes and cherishes the very crimes it so fiercely punishes, and in punishing reproduces ?" (p. 84.) And again, "Society is a game of chance, where the cunning slip through, and the strong leap over." (p. 190.) And again, "For every criminal you execute, you make a hundred murderers outside the prison, each as dangerous as would be the one inside." (p. 212.) Now, if disposed, we might take a very logical, and a very practical way withal, of disposing of this squeamishness, by asking, what is society after all, this bugbear, but the understood agreement of you and I, and the million, to conform to certain usages, which the past experience of mankind, and the known and accredited tendency of humanity to evil doing, unless restrained, seem to have rendered essential? If, now, those usages grate harshly on that sensitive one, or even chance to help forward this unfortunate, by its action, to misery, who are you, or who are the ten, or the ten hundred, wiser than all, who shall say of this great establishment-glorious with the highest of human endearments, rich with the golden sheaves of a harvest ripening ever, finding change by reform, and not reform by change, (sedulo cavere, ut Reformationis studium mutationem inducat, non autem studium mutationis Reformationem pretexat,)—away with it! it is unclean? But, we say, we prefer, with a little of the reader's forbearance, to take up the matter in Mrs. C.'s own gossiping way. "Society makes its own criminals." Well, we will not now question the fact, for we think we are told in

the book under hand, that the wildest fancies are facts somewhere within the limits of God's creation; and if this notable one must be inet, why, as well here as anywhere. If society makes its own criminals, it should not surely punish its own making :-if not, it makes no more. But, straightway, if we are to consider any point settled in human experience, criminals proceed to make themselves; now, query-had society better make a few, giving a monopoly, as it were, of crime, or had individuals better multiply it among themselves to the most profit? Or the question can be stated thus: Society, in its corporate capacity, if it make criminals, ought not in justice to punish; it therefore does not, and is just -to whom, pray? Why, only to the criminal; it appearing a matter of very little importance whether justice is done to those who are not criminal. Thus it appears that half of Mrs. Child's romantic regrets lose sight entirely of the great principle that the glorious operations of justice have regard not only to the individual subjected to its power, but to that society of which it is protectress. A violation of civil obligation, under any enlarged consideration of the subject, should be viewed not only with reference to the violator, but to the interests which are violated. Further on, where her pleasant trip to Rockland Lake calls forth some remarks upon the fate of the unfortunate Andre, she says: "It is not therefore a sense of justice, but a wish to inspire terror, which leads to the execution of spies." There again she loses sight, from mere wilfulness, (will directed by her strong sympathies,) of proper distinctions-distinction between justice to the individual and to the species. Could there be less of reason in smaller space? A General is servant to the interests of the people investing him with power. Justice to the interests of that people is his motive of action. If these interests are hazarded by such and such anticipated operations, so as to require the execution of such and such demands, on their occurrence, who would not see, and say, that justice was fulfilled in their execution, whether done by inspiring terror, or some other way? But again, give these ideas of the harsh justice of society the most practical bearing they can have-apply them to the need of the criminal himself. Here is a man who has offended against law; he is committed to the "morality of myrmidons, and the charity of constables,"

without any very visible perturbation in the outward world. But society made him a wretch, and, if you please, (a hard supposition,) he is aware of it; either through the medium of some such written sentiments as are within these covers, or better, because more probable, he arrives at it amid his prison fancies. Well, by and by he finds there are those outside of just his way of dreaming. He credits it hardly, (especially if a shrewd knave,) but yet credits it; and we will suppose him anxious to see such sympathizers. He finds one in a lady-any lady but Mrs. Child. Pleasantly, very likely, he listens to words that render less and less cankerous his own conscience, and give it less and less of doubt and fear to digest; but presently, amid the verbiage which seems to have no definite issueneither opening his prison, nor making it sweeter-nor breeding any new love for his species which has so wronged him, nor for Right, which has given him such a left-handed blow-nor for his own nature, seeing it has made a shuttlecock of him, but only for his vices, which have made a hero-martyr of him, which martyrdom he would neither extend nor renew, however graphically came from his visiter the pictures of its glory--amid all this, we say, he ventures the question, "Here I am now what shall I do?" A disgusting bluntness the fellow has, but what shall he do? How a short, plump question, testing practical issues, does bear down, and bear away, the pretty, the ideal, the vain! Now that he is in earnest, it will never do to read him Coleridge's Ode on Dejection, or to tell him of the bond of human sympathy, or of unutterable human love, or of spiral progress to the clouds, or of a "gleam in the far-off future;" for if a weak man, they will make him a lunatic, and if a strong one, he will either grin, or else put a fresh quid of tobacco in his cheek. No, no; the only way is the best way: "Sir, you have offended the law; you are in durance for it. You must reform, and if the temptations society has held out have helped you to misery, you should in future resist them; you can, and you must. Inaction or womanly regrets will never strengthen you."

How like a flood of effulgence beams in here the memory of a Howard's philanthropy! directing to a world that knew no crime-bringing promise of a career that will never fade! We do not intend to excite any comparisons very