subjects, and how few men, in a country where all depends on the institutions, have clear notions concerning their own condition."

"Certainly this is not the opinion we usually entertain of ourselves," observed John Effingham. "And yet it ought to be. I am far from underrating the ordinary information of the country, which, as an average information, is superior to that of almost every other people; nor am I one of those who, according to the popular European notion, fancy the Americans less gifted than common in intellect; there can be but one truth in any thing, however, and it falls to the lot of very few any where to master it. The Americans, moreover, are a people of facts and practices, paying but little attention to principles, and giving themselves the very minimum of time for investigations that lie beyond the reach of the common mind; and it follows that they know little of that which does not present itself in their every-day transactions. As regards the practice of the institutions, it is regulated here, as elsewhere, by party, and party is never an honest or a disinterested expounder.”

"Are you, then, more than in the common dilemma," asked Sir George, or worse off than your neighbours?"

"We are worse off than our neighbours, for the simple reason that it is the intention of the American system, which has been deliberately framed, and which is moreover the result of a bargain, to carry out its theory in practice; whereas, in countries where the institutions are the results of time and accidents, improvement is only obtained by innovations. Party invariably assails and weakens power. When power is the possession of a few, the many gain by party; but when power is the legal right of the many, the few gain by party. Now as party has no ally as strong as ignorance and prejudice, a right understanding of the principles of a government is of far more importance in a popular government than in any other. In place of the eternal eulogies on facts, that one hears on all public occasions in this country, I would substitute some plain and clear expositions of principles; or, indeed, I might say, of facts as they are connected with principles."

"Mais, la musique, Monsieur," interrupted Mademoiselle Viefville, in a way so droll as to raise a general smile, "qu'en pensez vous?"

"That it is music, my dear Mademoiselle, in neither fact nor principle."

"It only proves that a people can be free, Mademoiselle," observed Mrs. Bloomfield, "and enjoy fourth of July orations, without having very correct notions of harmony or time. But do our rejoicings end here, Miss Effingham?"

"Not at all-there is still something in reserve for the day, and all who honour it. I am told the evening, which promises to be sufficiently sombre, is to terminate with a fête that is peculiar to Templeton, and which is called 'The Fun of Fire.""

"It is an ominous name, and ought to be a brilliant ceremony." As this was uttered, the whole party entered the Wigwam. "The Fun of Fire" took place as a matter of course at a later hour. When night had set in, every body appeared in the main street of the village, a part of which, from its width and form, was particularly adapted to the sports of the evening. The females were mostly at the

windows, or on such elevated stands as favoured their view, and the party from the Wigwam occupied a large balcony that topped the piazza of one of the principal inns of the place.

The sports of the night commenced with rockets, of which a few that did as much credit to the climate as to the state of the pyrotechnics of the village, were thrown up as soon as the darkness had become sufficiently dense to lend them brilliancy. Then followed wheels, crackers, and serpents, all of the most primitive kind, if indeed there be any thing primitive in such amusements. The "Fun of Fire" was to close the rejoicings, and it was certainly worth all the other sports of that day united, the gingerbread and spruce beer included.

A blazing ball cast from a shop-door was the signal for the commencement of the Fun. It was merely a ball of rope yarn, or of some other similar material, saturated with turpentine, and it burned with a bright fierce flame until consumed. As the first of these fiery meteors sailed into the street, a common shout from the boys, apprentices, and young men, proclaimed that the fun was at hand. It was followed by several more, and in a few minutes the entire area was gleaming with glancing light. The whole of the amusement consisted in tossing the fire-balls with boldness and in avoiding them with dexterity, something like competition soon entering into the business of the scene.

The effect was singularly beautiful. Groups of dark objects became suddenly illuminated, and here a portion of the throng might be seen beneath a brightness like that produced by a bonfire, while all the background of persons and faces were gliding about in a darkness that almost swallowed up a human figure. Suddenly all this would be changed; the brightness would pass away, and a ball alighting in a spot that had seemed abandoned to gloom, it would be found peopled with merry countenances and active forms. The constant changes from brightness to deep darkness, with all the varying gleams of light and shadow, made the beauty of the scene, which soon extorted admiration from all in the balcony.

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'Mais, c'est charmant!" exclaimed Mademoiselle Viefville, who was enchanted at discovering something like gaiety and pleasure among the "tristes Américains," and who had never even suspected them of being capable of so much apparent enjoyment.

"These are the prettiest village sports I have ever witnessed," said Eve, "though a little dangerous, one would think. There is something refreshing, as the magazine writers term it, to find one of these miniature towns of ours condescending to be gay and happy in a village fashion. If I were to bring my strongest objection to American country life it would be its ambitious desire to ape the towns, converting the ease and abandon of a village into the formality and stiffness that render children in the clothes of grown people so absurdly ludicrous." "What!" exclaimed John Effingham; "do you fancy it possible to reduce a freeman so low as to deprive him of his stilts? No, no, young lady, you are now in a country where if you have two rows of flounces on your frock your maid will make it a point to have three, by way of maintaining the equilibrium. This is the noble ambition of liberty."

"Annette's foible is a love of flounces, cousin Jack, and you have

drawn that image from your eye instead of your imagination. It is a French as well as an American ambition, if ambition it be."

"Let it be drawn whence it may, it is true. Have you not remarked, Sir George Templemore, that the Americans will not even bear the ascendency of a capital? Formerly Philadelphia, then the largest town in the country, was the political capital; but it was too much for any one community to enjoy the united consideration that belongs to extent and politics; and so the honest public went to work to make a capital that should have nothing else in its favour but the naked fact that it was the seat of government, and I think it will be generally allowed that they have succeeded to admiration. I fancy Mr. Dodge will admit that it would be quite intolerable that country should not be town, and town country."

"This is a land of equal rights, Mr. John Effingham, and I confess that I see no claims that New York possesses, which does not equally belong to Templeton."

"Do you hold, sir," inquired Captain Truck, "that a ship is a brig, and a brig a ship?"

"The case is different; Templeton is a town, is it not, Mr. John Effingham ?"

"A town, Mr. Dodge, but not town. The difference is essential." "I do not see it, sir. Now, New York to my notion is not a town, but a city."

"Ah! This is the critical acumen of the editor! But you should be indulgent, Mr. Dodge, to us laymen, who pick up our phrases by merely wandering about the world, or in the nursery perhaps; while you of the favoured few, by living in the condensation of a province, obtain a precision and accuracy to which we can lay no claim."

The darkness prevented the editor of the Active Inquirer from detecting the general smile, and he remained in happy ignorance of the feeling that produced it. To say the truth, not the smallest of the besetting vices of Mr. Dodge had their foundation in a provincial education, and in provincial notions; the invariable tendency of both being to persuade their subject that he is always right, while all opposed to him in opinion are wrong. That well-known line of Pope, in which the poet asks, "what can we reason, but from what we know?" contains the principle of half our foibles and faults, and perhaps explains fully that proportion of those of Mr. Dodge, to say nothing of those of no small number of his countrymen. There are limits to the knowledge, and tastes, and habits of every man, and, as each is regulated by the opportunities of the individual, it follows of necessity that no one can have a standard much above his own experience. That an isolated and remote people should be a provincial people, or in other words a people of narrow and peculiar practices and opinions, is as unavoidable as that study should make a scholar; though in the case of America, the great motive for surprise is to be found in the fact that causes so very obvious should produce so little effect. When compared with the bulk of other nations, the Americans though so remote and insulated are scarcely provincial, for it is only when the highest standard of this nation is compared with the highest standard of other nations, that we detect the great

deficiency that actually exists. That a moral foundation so broad should uphold a moral superstructure so narrow, is owing to the circumstance that the popular sentiment rules, and as every thing is referred to a body of judges that in the nature of things must be of very limited and superficial attainments, it cannot be a matter of wonder to the reflecting, that the decision shares in the qualities of the tribunal. In America the gross mistake has been made of supposing that, because the mass rules in a political sense, it has a right to be listened to and obeyed in all other matters, a practical deduction that can only lead, under the most favourable exercise of power, to a very humble mediocrity. It is to be hoped that time, and a greater concentration of taste, liberality, and knowledge than can well distinguish a young and scattered population will repair this evil, and that our children will reap the harvest of the broad fields of intelligence that have been sowed by ourselves. In the meantime, the present generation must endure that which cannot easily be cured; and, among its other evils, it will have to submit to a great deal of very questionable information, not a few false principles, and an unpleasant degree of intolerant and narrow bigotry, that are propagated by such apostles of liberty and learning as Steadfast Dodge, Esquire.

We have written in vain, if it now be necessary to point out a multitude of things in which that professed instructor and Mentor of the public, the editor of the Active Inquirer, had made a false estimate of himself, as well as of his fellow creatures. That such a man should be ignorant, is to be expected, as he had never been instructed; that he was self-sufficient was owing to his ignorance, which oftener induces vanity than modesty; that he was intolerant and bigoted, follows as a legitimate effect of his provincial and contracted habits; that he was a hypocrite, came from his homage of the people; and that one thus constituted should be permitted, periodically, to pour out his vapidity, folly, malice, envy, and ignorance, on his fellow creatures, in the columns of a newspaper, was owing to a state of society in which the truth of the wholesome adage "that what is every man's business is nobody's business," is exemplified not only daily, but hourly, in a hundred other interests of equal magnitude, as well as to a capital mistake, that leads the community to fancy that whatever is done in their name is done for their good.

As the "Fun of Fire" had, by this time, exhibited most of its beauties, the party belonging to the Wigwam left the balcony, and, the evening proving mild, they walked into the grounds of the building, where they naturally broke into groups, conversing on the incidents of the day, or of such other matters as came uppermost. Occasionally, gleams of light were thrown across them from a fire-ball; or a rocket's starry train was still seen drawn in the air, resembling the wake of a ship at night, as it wades through the ocean.

WE shall not say it was an accident that brought Paul and Eve side by side, and a little separated from the others; for a secret sympathy had certainly exercised its influence over both, and probably contributed as much as anything else towards bringing about the circumstance. Although the Wigwam stood in the centre of the village, its grounds covered several acres, and were intersected with winding walks, and ornamented with shrubbery, in the well-known English style, improvements also of John Effingham; for, while the climate and forests of America offer so many inducements to encourage landscape gardening, it is the branch of art that, of all the other ornamental arts, is perhaps the least known in this country. It is true, time had not yet brought the labours of the projector to perfection, in this instance; but enough had been done to afford very extensive, varied, and pleasing walks. The grounds were broken, and John Effingham had turned the irregularities to good account by planting and leading paths among them, to the great amusement of the lookers-on, however, who, like true disciples of the Manhattanese economy, had already begun to calculate the cost of what they termed grading the lawns, it being with them as much a matter of course to bring pleasure grounds down to a mathematical surface as to bring a railroad route down to the proper level.

Through these paths, and among the irregularities, groves, and shrubberies just mentioned, the party began to stroll; one group taking a direction eastward, another south, and a third westward, in a way soon to break them up into five or six different divisions. These several portions of the company ere long got to move in opposite directions, by taking the various paths, and while they frequently met, they did not often re-unite. As has been already intimated, Eve and Paul were alone for the first time in their lives, under circumstances that admitted

of an uninterrupted confidential conversation. Instead of profiting immediately, however, by this unusual occurrence, as many of our readers may anticipate, the young man continued the discourse, in which the whole party had been engaged when they entered the gate that communicated with the street.

"I know not whether you felt the same embarrassment as myself, to-day, Miss Effingham," he said, "when the orator was dilating on the glories of the republic, and on the high honours that accompany the American name. Certainly, though a pretty extensive traveller, I have never yet been able to discover that it is any advantage abroad to be one of the fourteen millions of freemen.""

"Are we to attribute the mystery that so long hung over your birthplace to this fact," Eve asked, a little pointedly.