with us? Think of any change, any phenomenon whatever. Think now of an object or event which is in so close a proximity to it as to exclude the contact of every thing else existing. If this object or event exist in this closest contiguity immediately previous to the change; what else is your idea of a cause?

We had intended to couple with this article a Sketch of a System of the Philosophy of the Human Mind, Part First, comprehending the Physiology of the Mind.' This work constitutes the outlines of a part of Dr. Brown's Lectures, and was printed last year for the use of his pupils. But had time and the length of the foregoing article permitted us to notice this original and curious volume, an advertisement in England, announcing, as we have been informed, the publication of the author's Lectures at large in four volumes, would have induced us to postpone our design.

E. Everill

ART. XXIII.- Ensayo de la historia Civil del Paraguay, Buenos-Ayres, y Tucuman, escrita por el doctor D. Gregorio Funes, dean de la Santa Iglesia Catedral de Cordova.-Tom. S. 8vo. Buenos-Ayres, 1816-1817.

CAUSES, into which we have not time now to enter much in detail, have prevented the momentous drama performing in South America from engaging its due share of the public interest in this country. It might have been thought that, to us at least in the United States, few subjects of a political nature would have awakened a wider sympathy, than the character and probable results of the contests for independence in the South. But it must not be forgotten that the practical statesman has very little concern with those feelings and associations, which belong, in a considerable degree, to the region of sentiment. That Buenos Ayres and Mexico are a part of our continent may suggest fine themes for gen→ eral declamation and poetry is true; but if, notwithstanding this, our political and commercial relations with them are insignificant, compared with those we stand in with the European states; if it is of far more importance to us to command the respect of those, who bear sway on the banks of the Thames or of the Neva, than to be hailed as brethren along all the banks of the Amazon and the La Plata ; and

as to the mere point of geographical proximity, if it would be easier, as we imagine is the fact, to sail from New York and make the grand tour of all the courts of Europe and return to the Narrows, than to make a similar tour by land to our sister states in South America, then all the appeals resting on the community of the American name, or the partnership of one continent are fallacious. Europe and Asia are also one continent; and the Russian emperor's heart appears to be open to all that tender interest in the oriental world, which this fact must naturally excite. He would fain have his banners floating on the towers of Tefliz, and we question not he feels grieved to think that the great wall of China should sunder those, who inhabit the same hemisphere. The British sovereigns of India feel this tender sentiment; and are rejoiced to find that there is a practicable pass through the defi es of the Himala. Had not such a pass been discovered, we doubt not their India boards and their governors general would have imitated the example of the illustrious Prussian explorer of the Andes, who wept when he heard that the summits of Bunderpouch overtopped the heights of Chimborazo ;—a geographical question by the way which we regard as far from settled.

The truth is, that the policy, which has been at various times most powerfully recommended in the United States, of a vigorous inteference on our part, in the South American contest, is a policy highly anti-republican; a policy which has wasted Europe from the middle ages to the present day. We have no concern with South America: we have no sympathy, we can have no well founded political sympathy with them We are sprung from different stocks, we speak different languages, we have been brought up in different social and moral schools, we have been governed by different codes of law, we profess radically different forms of religion. Should we espouse their cause, they would borrow our money and grant commissions to our privateers, and possibly extend some privileges to our trade, if the fear of the English, which bringeth a snare, did not prevent this. But they would not act in our spirit, they would not follow our advice, they could not imitate our example. Not all the treaties we could make, nor the commissioners we could send out, nor the money we could lend them, would transform their Pueyrredons and their Artigases, into Adamses or Franklins or their

Bolivars into Washingtons. The state of society and of life among them forbids our feeling a sympathy with them. How can our thrifty regular merchants sympathize with a people, who send the letter post down the river, on the back of a swimmer? how can our industrious frugal yeomen sympathise with a people that sit on horseback to fish? how can our mild and merciful people, who went through their revolution without shedding a drop of civil blood, sympathize with a people, that are hanging and shooting each other in their streets, with every fluctuation of their ill organized and exasperated factions? It does not yet appear that there exist in any of those provinces the materials and elements of a good national character; of a character to justify our putting our own interests at hazard, by interfering in their present contests. We know not in fact whence such materials and elements could come. Certainly not from Spain and Portugal, the nations of Europe, that have sunk most into arrears, in the great account of humanity, and who have been labouring with causes of degeneracy too powerful and too active at home, to allow them to send out any life and character to their distant provinces. And if the elements of a good national character were not likely to be imported from the mother country, what one propitious circumstance has there been for forming it on the spot? The various tyrannies, political, feudal, and ecclesiastical of Europe, are the auspices under which these provinces have grown up; and in many of them the seductions of equatorial and tropical climates, and the possession of the mines of the precious metals have come in aid of human oppression, to insure the degeneracy of the inhabitants. We are not fond of deducing practical results from theoretical causes, apparently visionary, however obvious and marked the coincidence, which seems to authorize the deduction; but we hold it to be a maxim clearly established in the history of the world, that none but the temperate climates, and the climates which produce and retain the European complexion of skin in its various shades, admit of the highest degrees of national character. In no Asiatic region, that falls without this condition and in no African one, has any thing like a free populace discovered itself, in any permanent civilized organization, at any period. Fl: shes of genius appear in these regions, particularly in those where the nomadic life prevails; powerful individual

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South America.

minds are formed and produce powerful effects, successful Conquerors wield to the dismay of the world the mighty instrument of an uninquiring, unreasoning military populace, but all their achievements are as changeable and fickle as the abodes in the deserts. They vary with all the accidents of the personal qualities of their shabs, and rajahs, and sultans; nor do they acquire any permanence till they come in contact with the European politics, whose balance is often concerned, to sustain their tottering thrones. This state of things in the old world authorizes an inference with respect We know not what there is to a part at least of the new. in our torrid zones and vertical suns, in our groves of oranges and plantations of coffee, in our islands of sugar, in our regions of dark ornamental woods, of golden plumages, cactuses, crocodiles, and boa constrictors, in our beds of gold, silver, and diamonds, to exempt them from the political fortunes, infallibly attendant on these natural properties in the old world. We see not why the lord of a Brasilian drove of horses and horned cattle is to differ from the chief of an Arabian herd of camels and dromedaries. A blazing sun must be as relaxing at Rio Janerio as at Mocha; and Calno is not more like Carchemish, than Serro do Frio* is like Golconda, or Cuba like Ceylon. The same causes produce the same effects; and we question whether the pure breezes, which gave their name to Buenos-Ayres, have any thingin them pow erful enough to animate the mass of the inhabitants, at least of the interior of the province, with a true spirit of independence. South America will be to North America, we are strongly inclined to think, what Asia and Africa are to Europe. Providence gives not all to one region, and though it is a beautiful vision of philosophy, that all the sorts and forms of good

Here the Forbidden District of the Diamonds is in sight: and its appearance is such as might form a fit description in eastern romance, for the land, where the costliest and proudest ornaments of wealth and power Innumerable peaks are seen, some of prodigious height; are found. mountains of bare rock and perpendicular elevation; others of more per. ishable materials, and in a state of dissolution like the Alps of Savoy; with brush-wood growing among the grass, and a sort of grey moss, which clothes the surface wherever it is not newly scarred or covered with recent wreck; a scene of Alpine grandeur and Alpine desolation, but, in one rèspect, of more than Alpine beauty, for the waters are beautifully clear: they fall in sheets, in threads, in cataracts, and make their way, sometimes by subterranean channels, to the four larger rivers, which carry off the waters of the district.' Southey's history of Brazil, iii. 234.

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scek and tend to each other, and will finally, in a perfect system of things, meet and coincide; yet it is not so with the states and kingdoms, as they now exist, and mankind hath ever made its greatest political, intellectual, and moral advances, we will not say where it has had most to struggle with, but we will say where it has had least to be corrupted with; and we believe the isothermal lines of character might be drawn with nearly as much precision as those of temperature.

When we look at the events which have been transpiring in South America now for twelve or thirteen years, we find nothing to inspire better sentiments with regard to it. A time has now elapsed, since the first rising in the Spanish colonies, equal to that, which elapsed from the declaration of the American independence to the adoption of the federal constitution. And though in the rapid succession of revolutions and reports of revolutions, and in the inextricable perplexity of the contradictory accounts we are constantly receiving from South America, it is really difficult not only to learn exactly, but even to conjecture the true position of things, it may perhaps safely be affirmed, that if the return of the old regime is rendered desperate, it is not yet shown that any thing better is not hopeless. In Mexico, the revolution appears to be stationary, and in Brazil they have exchanged a viceroy for a king. In the other provinces where at times an independent organization of government has seemed to be best consolidating itself, nothing has been effected, on which it is safe to calculate as permanent. Too much time has passed to have things still in this state, were there existing in these regions the membra disjecta of liberty. It is more than time that ferments were settled, first prejudices gotten over, and the serious difficulties which ever attend a change done away, and if there were much that is good, solid, and disinterested in the mass of the community, it is time that it disclosed and manifested itself.

We say not this reproachfully. We know many difficulties, with which they have had to struggle; and there are doubtless others which we do not know. But some of these difficulties-and those the most serious ones-are the very points in the nature of these regions, and consequent character of their inhabitants, to which we have already alluded, and which ought to make us wary of any entangling alliance with them.