ciety in its corporate capacity. Social life is the word, and here woman should rule supreme arbitress of forms. She is responsible, and justly so, for every controlling usage.

We regret that our space compels us to leave the subject with this mere glance at one of its features. We may possibly take some future occasion to pursue our thoughts further upon this and kindred topics.

A word or two now about the book; for we should hardly be true to our office of reviewer without some such note. Yet it would be scarcely fair to test its matter, as a whole, by any rules of critical analysis. Written, as it seems to have been, at different times, and without comparison of the parts, there is of necessity frequent repetition of some opinions and phrases. Many things are for the like reason carelessly said-some unprettily said; and her illustrations, though fanciful, are many of them crude and undigested. But there is little that is common-place in the volume. This is praise; better praise than we wish we could give parts of it, which seem to us objectionable in sentiment. Moreover, there is a vivacious naturalness about the book, compassing even its oddities, covering up its minor defects of rhetoric, that to one like ourselves, tired with the heat and dust of this dry September, is refreshing as an April shower. At times, too, there are scattered up and down over the letters little eloquent apostrophes, which, if we liken its general vivacity to a shower, may in sequence be likened to an iced draught of the pure element. We have not even now said what we might say, that there is an extravagant tone pervading the whole, which being at once natural and graceful in the writer, we can by no means condemn; but the same being strange and unsuited to a running comment upon practical matters, and such occasionally are sublimed by the writer's touch, we cannot wholly praise. Mrs. C. should have written "Letters from the Country." How redolent would they have been of fresh air and springing verdure! how full of the music of birds, and of leaves, and of brooks murmuring softly-as brooks do

in dreams! What a book would it have been for a companion in summer-time, for one to lounge with of a hot afternoon, under grand old trees, whose leaves let no spangle of the sunshine through upon the grass where you lie-watching sun and shadow chasing each other far away, and then the lights and shades of the book, the original and the copy, at a glance. As it is, we see everyday scenes when we see them at all-for it is wonderful how the writer, living in a city, has found extrinsic sources of interestthrough a prism. Every beggar we meet is a Belisarius or Cervantes; every rambling songstress a Corinne forsaken; every outcast a Lear without his crown; every street-walker an Olivia Primrose. And if she were to write us a novel--as who knows but she may-there would be in it enormities, but few realitiespersonifications, with few persons ;there would be witches, but no Macduff; Rob Roy, but no Nicol Jarvie; Meg, but no Dandie Dinmont; Burchell, but no Vicar; Titania and Peas Blossom, but no Snug or Bottom; Ravenswood, but no Caleb; Juno, but no Andromache.

It is, in short, a book for a steamboat ride, but not upon the Hudson; to relieve a sick chamber, but the patient must not be nervous; to engage a man after business hours, but he must avoid the Woman's Rights. It is a book for you, indulgent reader, to run through after this hasty comment, and say if you will be most her friend or our friendor, better, friend to both.

One word more, and a kind one, to Mrs. Child. We wish not to lessen one iota the amount of your influence, which we believe to be considerable; and so believing, we implore you, by your hatred of formalism and cant, of ostentation and pride--by your sympathy with human want, and your hearty relish for all that is natural and noble in thought and in action, to direct that influence against the crying evils of social life. Your energies misdirected will avail less than those of a weak man; rightly directed, they will avail more than those of the strongest. "Vale, nunc-tibique persuade, esse te quidem mihi caram; sed multo fore cariorem, si talibus preceptis lætabere.”

THE life and character of Henry Clay are fully before the public. Were it otherwise, no brief space, which alone this journal could afford a few pages quickly and easily run over-would suffice for such a purpose. No scattered words of tribute could bring a man before us, who, for half a century, has filled so large a space in the eye of the nationwho, for all coming time, will occupy and adorn so large a portion of the nation's history. But it is in all respects unnecessary. His humble childhood and early struggles, his subsequent long and brilliant career, his great public services and eminently noble qualities, have been many times set forth and with the greatest distinctness. The various distinguished positions which he has occupied from the first are, perhaps, more familiar to the people than those of any man, but Washington, who has arisen in the commonwealth. From his birth in a farmhouse of Virginia amid the conflict of the Revolution, and his entrance, an unfriended youth, into the hardships of a professional life in the West, to his last exit from the chief council of the nation -whether lifting the hand of eloquence at the bar or in the senate-chamber, whether raising a determined voice for the birth of other republics in the New World, and against the oppression of longstruggling, famished, and down-trodden Greece, or presenting an equally determined front towards the encroachments of executive power at home-whether representing the dignity and worth of the American name in a foreign country, or, in our own midst, forming, defending, establishing, the great American System of Finance, or, by the efforts of an almost despairing eloquence, saving the republic from dishonor, disunion, and ruin-no one of these, or the many other high stations occupied by him in the public eye, during the course of a long life, did Mr. Clay ever leave with one stain upon his public character, or without an addition to his honorable fame. But, of all those elevated positions, though some may have been by externals more brilliant, no one has appeared to us more truly exalted by purity of patriotism and the dig

nity of wide-seeing statesmanship, than that in which he now, at last, stands before us, on the exciting question of the admission of Texas into our Union. And we esteem ourselves fortunate that we can fortify our opinion by such a communication as follows, from one not blinded by the dust of any political arena, but whose vision is the clearer, that he looks forth upon men and things from the calmness of academic shades and the quiet repose of Letters.

To the Editor of the American Review.

SIR-I am no politician in the ordinary sense of that term; that is, I never have held, and I never expect to hold office. My daily professional employments remove me far from the strifes of elections and mass-meetings. The pursuits in which I am constantly engaged are such as, in any ordinary condition of our country, would entirely shut me out from all active participation in the political contentions of the day; and yet I must confess a deep and, at times, a most exciting interest in the result of the present election. The reasons of this interest I wish to state, because they are somewhat different from those which are most usually urged upon the country. I profess no very deep understanding of the real merits of those questions of tariff, currency, and distribution, which most regard as the main matters at issue. far as I understand these points, I am in favor of the Whig measures, at the same time admitting that their opponents may possibly be right, that they present some fair arguments, and that their policy, if wrong, could only produce a temporary evil, soon to be rectified when the mischief should be so palpable that a desire for its removal would become stronger than any party ties. But, sir, I go much further than this. If I were opposed to the Whig policy on all the points which have been mentioned, and decidedly in favor of all the Loco-Foco views on the same subjects, I should still give my vote, and a thousand if I had them, for Henry Clay. For such an apparent inconsistency many reasons might be given,

As

derived from the personal character of the man, and justifying the most enthusiastic admiration that could be felt for him. The views at present offered, however, are mainly grounded on his letter written last spring, in which he expresses his opinion on the annexation of Texas. It does really seem wonderful that lower considerations, arising from collateral aspects of the question, should have kept in the back-ground the truly elevated position Mr. Clay there assumes, especially when contrasted with that of others who have addressed the public on the same matter. Mr. Polk is for "immediate annexation," reason or no reason, come war come peace, irrespective of national honor, national treaties, the common law of mankind, and even the law of God himself. Gov. Cass and Gen. Jackson rise a little higher. They have a show of reasons, in its pretended importance as a military frontier; reasons, to be sure, which no man's common sense can appreciate, yet still they may be called reasons, if their authors will have it so. Mr. Van Buren, in a manner more honorable to himself, views the question in its relation to foreign nations, to peace and war, the present national treaties, and present obligations. Mr. Calhoun and the southern democrats advocate it on account of its tendency to perpetuate their favorite domestic institutions. The northern abolitionists take ground above all these, and oppose it because the measure is at war with the interests of freedom, and would extend the area of slavery. Mr. Clay, we hesitate not on saying, assumes a position even higher than this; a position which, for its abstract grandeur, ought to call forth the warm admiration of friend and foe, whether at the south or at the north, whether pro-slavery or ultra-abolitionist. It is a position characteristic of himself, because it exhibits that trait which has ever been most prominent during his whole public life. This letter shows him to be what he is, and ever has been, a national man. Contrast with it the contemptible epistle of Polk to Kane, on the subject of protection; contrast with it the letters of the various democratic candidates, before the Baltimore convenvention; contrast with it those miserable productions which, on the eve of an election, are sometimes drawn from men whom third parties, in their usual way, succeed in making hypocrites. The letter of Henry Clay is for the nation;

it is for all time-for all similar cases. It contains words of wisdom, and maxims of statesmanship, that may be quoted, and, we believe, will be quoted, centuries hence. The temporary questions connected with Texas may, in a few years, cease to have any interest; even a war with Mexico, or with England, after having produced the usual amount of blood and death, would pass away, and might even leave some lessons of salutary wisdom to compensate, in some degree, for the evils it had occasioned. Much as such events are to be deprecated, their evils are temporary and remediable. So, also, may we say in regard to the bearings of the question on the subject of slavery, fraught, as they evidently are, with the most tremendous issues. Slavery is but an incident to our original condition and present frame of government, and, be the period longer or shorter, will, in the course of events, have an end. Those who oppose the annexation on this account, do so from noble and elevated motives, and the majority of such, we are persuaded, will cordially support the man who agrees with them in the result, although he arrives at it from considerations more purely national, and more deeply connected with the vital interests of our confederacy. We say that there is a higher reason than those which are connected with the subject of slavery, and this is the reason which naturally and spontaneously presents itself to the mind of Henry Clay. Let us, in imagination, follow him to the retirement of his chamber, as he sits down to answer a request for an expression of his views on this subject. We may suppose him fully aware of the use to which such an answer will be applied; we may imagine the deep personal interest he has in so constructing it as to please the majority, from whose suffrages he is ardently desirous of obtaining the end of a noble ambition. All these influences would strongly concur in inducing him to view the question as other men do, in its merest temporary aspects; and to those temporary aspects he does give an attention commensurate with their importance. But this is not enough for Henry Clay; as he writes on, and his soul becomes warmed, all these considerations vanish. The fixed and long-cherished habits and thoughts of the statesman, which we may suppose, for a moment, to have been superseded by personal

anxieties in respect to the bearing of the question on his own political prospects, come back to their usual course, and he is himself again. The candidate for of fice is forgotten, and he is once more, in imagination, on the floor of the senatehouse-the legislator, the statesman, the man of enlarged and national feelings. Every consideration is now too narrow for his mind, unless it embrace the whole extent of his country's confederated territory, and the whole period of her national existence. Its collateral bearings are laid aside as he discovers that here, in this very measure, got up and concocted, as it evidently was, for the vilest of mere party purposes, there is, nevertheless, involved a profound constitutional question. Here is to be considered a grave rule of national action-a rule to be settled now, and the issues of which, if settled wrong, are fraught with evils which no man can calculate; for they reach beyond peace and war, beyond even slavery and anti-slavery, into the most vital principles, into the very heart of our confederacy. Shall such a question, he asks himself, become the game of a political canvass? Shall it be settled in the heat of an excited general election? Shall it be a matter of majorities? No, says Henry Clay; here are other issues involved, of far more consequence. It is not a question of admitting a young sister territory within our acknowledged limits, and which had been, from infancy, fostered and nursed with the expectation of being received into the family of states; the constitution had clearly provided for that. It is the far more momentous question of the incorporation of a foreign state, as much foreign as France or England. There is, then, a point to be first settled, in comparison with which the present election, considered merely in itself, the military advantages of Texas, the plans of England, or even the far higher considerations of its present bearings upon slavery, are all to be postponed. This, surely, is not a matter to be decided simply by majorities. It is no question of ordinary internal legislation. Here, all should be strict constructionists, whatever measure of liberality we might be inclined to indulge in other and more domestic matters; here, if ever, the doctrine of state-rights has some meaning-in fact, a most important significance. If in any sense we are a partnership, a confederacy of states, we are

most certainly such in respect to this. Viewed in any light, and on either of the contested theories of our constitution, it swells into a question of equal magnitude and importance. If we should ever act in reference to the will of the whole nation, instead of the will of any part, be it larger or smaller, majority or not; or, in other words, if there are any acts which should be pre-eminently, and in the very highest sense, national, this, of all others, is such an act. It should be viewed with no reference to Southern institutions, or Northern opposition to them. It involves a national proceeding back of all ordinary enactments, back even of the constitution, which contains no provision for such a step, and which must be so essentially modified by it-a national proceeding requiring something of a renewed exercise of that original vitality which gave birth to the constitution itself. Adopt whatever theory we please; whether we argue as the advocates of the confederated or more national aspect of our government, it is, in the one case, nothing less than the admission of a new and foreign member into a partnership originally formed with no reference to it, and, in the other, a violation of the national identity. It is a measure in direct opposition to those state-right principles, insisted on by none more than by those Southern men who are now so clamorous for immediate annexation by a bare majority, and who contradict their own doctrines in that very point, when even the most strenuous opponents of their favorite theory of the constitution would admit that they had some application. certainly, if a single state can justly refuse obedience to a law of internal legislation, which a majority of the other parties to the compact have deemed sanctioned by the constitution, and by a regard to those very objects which were specially in view in the formation of the government, why may not a single state dissent to the admission of an external power, never contemplated in the national articles, and whose incorporation would most seriously affect every interest of the previous national organization? Considerations of equal if not greater force present themselves in that aspect of our government which is regarded as opposed to the doctrine of a confederacy. If, in the one case, the effect of the measure, unless unanimously adopted, would be virtually to dissolve the compact, and leave each part at lib

For,

erty to refuse association with the foreign intruder, with which it had never formed alliance, it would be, in the other, a complete change of the national identity. It would be, in fact, the creation of a new nation, with new relations, new responsibilities, unknown to the previous organization of the body politic. Our present constitution was for these United States. If extended to Texas, it would require a new title and a new ratification; it would be, in fact, a new firm, and, according to all laws of partnership, there would be need of a new promulgation to the world, and a new acknowledgment of its corporate existence, by all parties with whom it might maintain intercourse; there would even be need of a new national flag, and a new inscription on the national coin.

Considerations such as these presented themselves to the mind of Henry Clay, and every lower aspect faded in the comparison. Whatever might be his own personal opinions, as to the mere temporary effects of the step, supposing it to be taken constitutionally, honorably, peaceably, and without the fearful responsibility of extending the area of slavery,-whatever might be his sentiments as a Southern man, not viewing, as he most frankly admits, Southern institutions in the same light with the people of the North,-all these were comparatively of but little moment, to the adjustment of the other great national principle, which, when left unsettled, or settled in a wrong way, disarranges all below it, and leaves the most sacred elements of our national life to be the sport of every presidential election, and the game of such men as John Tyler and his treaty-making cabinet.

These, then, were the grounds of that most noble declaration,-that whatever might be his personal views, (which he frankly admits were on the side of the South,) he should oppose the annexation of Texas, irrespective of the particular advantages or disadvantages of the measure, as long as any respectable minority, of any part of the Union, and for any reasons, refused its assent. In the admission of a new partner into the confederacy, or in introducing a new modification of the national existence, he would have even the smallest portion exercise, not only an influence, but a controlling influence. Even Vermont, if she stood alone, should be heard. The reception of this foreign territory might deeply affect her dearest interests. Such an expansion of

the national being might (in this day of strict construction in regard to all matters of healthy legitimate internal legislation) proportionably restrict the free exercise of those national prerogatives she had conceded for the common benefit of the confederacy of her sister states, but never for the benefit of Texas. Her interests might clash, or seem to clash, with those of some other members of the original Union, and here she would compromise, if no other method was found effectual, because mutual concession was in the national bond. She might have a strong dislike to certain institutions of other sister states; these, however, she must tolerate for the same reason; but she could not, at the will of a mere majority, consent that this bond should be opened for the admission of other parties, who might hereafter claim from her other compromises, and other concessions, for which she had never stipulated,-who, after having been themselves admitted through the door of the widest latitudinarianism, might hereafter be loudest in the demand of strict construction. Conceding, that there was something in the spirit of her assent to the constitution which required her to make compromises of her just claims with South Carolina, no principle of justice, equity, or the constitution, no national feeling, no law of majorities, rightly demanded of her to place herself in a position, when Texas hereafter might successfully require the abandonment of protection to her domestic industry, or that she should be employed in the degrading work of arresting fugitive slaves, who had escaped from this extended area of freedom. Hard as was its fulfilment, she had, in consideration of great national interests, promised this to South Carolina, but she never had given the other states, be it larger or smaller majorities of them, power to bind her to the same conditions to Texas, or Canada, or Cuba, should the latter also ever seek to enlarge the area of freedom, by transferring her domestic institutions and her nationality to the United States.

Such are the views most prominent in Mr. Clay's letter. They are noble views

far-reaching, statesman-like views. How immeasurably superior does he appear in this respect to the Polks, the Jacksons, the Casses, and the Tylers, by whom he is assailed! I wonder his own friends have not given them more prominence, instead of being so much occupied with those mere temporary bear