testant Cantons are arrayed against each other as in former times. The laws that were made allowing freedom of worship to both sects are no longer able to maintain the quiet they created. The violence of feeling continually augments and the latest news informs us that Argovies is preparing to attack Lucerne. The council of Zurich (a Protestant canton) have resolved to send commissioners to Lucerne (a Catholic canton) to insist on their not receiving Jesuits, and to prevent the formation of a free corps by the citizens. At the same time it proclaimed a determination to resist with physical force all interference in its affairs by other cantons. Attempts are made in other parts of the country to form a new confederation, to be called "The Popular Helvetique Association." The Swiss Diet, which meets alternately at Zurich, Lucerne, and Berne, contains too many discordant elements to secure the peace of that country, which has lost its patriotism, morality, and honor together. The probability is, that nothing will arrest their civil dissensions, but the interference of foreign powers, and then the history of the country of Tell and Winkleried, as a separate nation, will be closed.

Austria and Prussia remain quiet by the force of governmental pressure. All the fires there burn under ground, but none the less fierce for that. Austria has had the wisdom to pardon the conspirators condemned in 1840. The fact that all the tyrannical governments of Europe find it expedient to pardon criminals, convicted of plottery against their existence, or commuting their punishment, exhibits a fear of exasperating the discontented, which argues a transfer of some of the power from the throne to the people. This silent admission of the danger of increasing the popular dislike, is more significant than it at first sight seems to be. This hesitating to strike, yet fearing not to strike, takes away the oppressor's strongest weaponterror.

Poor Poland is no longer treated as a nation, yet Russia finds national feeling still too much alive. A Polish lady who has had the presumption to paint two pieces descriptive of the Polish Peasantry,

in

one of which is a mother with two children, and in the other an aged couple with three children-standing amid the smoking fragments of their burned huts, is watched for by the police. These pictures are supposed to have some political reference to contain some latent rebellion, and so the lady-painter bids fair to become acquainted with a prison. What a comment on the Russian government.

Germany is still expending her energies in science and literature-her great men studying every land under heaven but their own, and working out every problem but

that of their country's regeneration. Suffering under oppression, rent by religious differences, Germany presents the aspect of a nation of thinkers intent on everything but their own emancipation from slavery. Morse's Telegraph has of course attracted the attention of her scientific men, and, strange to say, the honor of its invention is transferred from this country to Germany. Experiments, and successful ones, are declared to have been made in this mode of conveying intelligence, and proof downright is supposed to be furnished that Mr. Morse has no claim to originality. It would be impossible in our limits to give a fair statement of their argument and evidence, but they are, in our mind, insufficient to affect the fame of Mr. Morse. Music has undergone a revolution since the days of Handel, and is now studied, both in Germany and Belgium, with a zeal from which we ought to hope great results. But the difficulty is, music is now a more marketable commodity than formerly, and the great effort seems to be to feed the passion for novelty. In instrumental music, Germany excels all other nations. The artist life there is surrounded by an atmosphere favorable to its highest cultivation. The combination of fancy, learning, taste, and feeling, is more perfect in the "Fatherland" than in Italy or France. Spohr stands at the head of modern composers. Robert Schumann is rapidly gaining a reputation as a quartette composer. Wagner, at the head of the opera at Dresden, seems wavering in his sudden fame. In his new opera of Rienzi, a chorus is sung by men on horseback, which of course is sure to win transient applause. Albert Sortzing is succeeding in the comic style, and, like Wagner, composes his own libretto, which gives him great advantage in consulting the effect of movement. We cannot give even the list of the new works, that have lately appeared in this nation of authors, on philosophy, astronomy, natural history, philology, belles lettres, and the fine arts.

Russia, the great despotism that is daily strengthening in its feudal system while the other countries of Europe are weakening on their ancient foundation, is pressing down by her power on the south, like an Alpine glacier slowly settling into the valley below. The Cossacks wage a desperate war, but it is the wild struggle of savage life against the slow and steady and resistless encroachments of civilization. Webster's speeches printed in Russian, are read at St. Petersburg with interest, by her great political men, as fine specimens of argumentation and oratory.

The East has nothing new. Turkey exhibits occasional life in her efforts to keep in subjection the Druses and other tribes forming the eastern boundary of her dominions.