stone, pretending to be a monument erected to them by Otto, was for some time exhibited. The ores now procured from this mine are sulphuric, as was mentioned under the head of the Oker. 1 think the descent of a mine must form an era in any man's feelings," as Mr. Ogilvie says his oration did in Charles Brown's. I regretted that some accidental circumstances prevented our descent into the Rammelsberg from having its full effect on my imagination. The descent into the Biel's hole, a dark, gloomy, horrible cavern, made a sort of preparation, and took off the wire edge of the feelings, which would have been excited by the first entrance into a mine. Then, as we were to make a considerable journey on foot, we did not think it prudent to fatigue ourselves by descending too far. The entrance into this mine, being on the side of a mountain, you march upright into a long, dark, dreary passage, partly cut through rock, firm enough to sustain the superincumbent weight, partly supported by timbers at the sides and across the tops, and partly well arched round with the fragments of stone, broken out in digging it. This passage is just high enough to walk without stooping, and four feet wide. It is floored in the middle with plank, and the sound of the little cars or wheels by which the ore is drawn out, rolling and echoing at a distance like an earthquake in the mountains, was grand and solemn. As the car approached. the lamp of the miners twinkled more and more brightly, and I felt a shudder at their salutation in passing, "Glück auf," well up. This was repeated to us by every miner we passed, and often on passing unobserved the mouth of some cross passage, a hollow voice would issue from it with his ominous salutation, and make a man tremble. After proceeding about twenty five fathoms in this direction, we reached a perpendicular descent with a windlass working, by which ore was brought up, and men like demons gathered round to receive it and carry it off. The Egyptian darkness of the hole, into which the tubs of the windlass descended, the feeble light of the spot where we stood, the struggle and tension of the chords by which the loaded buckets come up, the solitude and remoteness of the scene in the bowels of the earth, where, if the mass above us fell, no human eye would rest again on our remains, united to produce impressions sublime and powerful. We waited a moment, and descended five ladders deep, and followed the passages through New Vein. Above us and around us were long green icicles of the sulphate of copper, and the air was filled with mineral vapours. These are said not to be unhealthy, existing probably in a state of great solution. The grandest sight in the mines to me was the water-wheels turned by the water of the mines, and applied to drawing up the ore, and pumping the lower

part of the works. Nothing is finer than the approach to such a great subterraneous wheel. It is first heard. The water, vexed and dashed upon it, roars down into its inferior channel, wearied, as it were, with being broken on this monstrous wheel ; and this noise is heard and echoed all along the passages to such a degree, that one thinks, as he comes nearer, that he is approaching a great cataract, into which another step will plunge him. But one not only hears the wheel, one feels it; a strong chilly undulation is communicated to the air of these subterraneous caverns by the revolution of its broad and heavy wings. And when one approaches near enough to see it by the dim light of the lamp, the heavy sway of this great machine, the power with which it moves, and which it propagates, the gloom in which it is wrapt, which prevents one from seeing distinctly how it is hung, so that it seems rather some magical structure, which one dreads approaching; all this works powerfully on the imagination. There is one other spectacle, particularly in these mines, which we were not fortunate enough to see. As the ore is very compact and hard, it is impossible to break it off without some mechanical means of great efficacy. The ordinary process of drilling and blowing is too tedious and expensive for the worth of the ore. They accordingly apply fire. A large heap of pine wood is piled up under the roof of the excavation, which they wish farther to loosen, and this is set on fire. One can imagine the terror and grandeur which must exist in the aspect of a raging fire, in one of these subterraneous caves, filled with sulphuric and pitchy vapours, and producing an intolerable suffocating heat. We got the miners, who are here obliged to work stark naked, to kindle a torch or two and wave about in the darkness; this, however, afforded but a faint image of the real fire setting, as it is called.

'At about 12 we arrived at Clausthal, and after dinner descended one hundred fathoms into the Carolina mine; it is 288 deep, but there were repairs below, which prevented our descending; thus fate seemed to oppose our fulfilling the wish of going to the bottom of the thing. Our guides, who were not regularly posted in that part of the mine, lost their way once, a very comfortable circumstance, a quarter of a mile under ground. We came up another mine, and made our egress into the open air, a quarter of a mile nearly, from the place where we entered. It was the Dorothea we came up, the deepest and richest of the Harz mines. After coming up from the mines we visited the mint, a small establishment of old date. About $11,000, mostly in silver pieces of about half a Spanish dollar in value, are coined weekly, and paid out in wages to the labourers; two hundred of the latter were dismissed the day we were there.'

ART. XV.-1. Construction construed, and Constitutions vindicated. By John Taylor, author of the Enquiry and Arator. Richmond, 1820, 8vo, pp. 344.

2. Observations on Public Principles and Characters, with reference to recent events. November, 1820, pp. 62.

EACH period of history has some topic of predominant interest, which indicates the prevailing spirit of the age. Certain words at different epochs are so frequently repeated that they become quite familiar, and appear in every page of contemporary annals, and then go out of use altogether except in history. Others rise up and mark the precedence of new ideas which are universally entertained in their turn, and give an impulse to all the movements of society. Carrying the banner of the cross against infidels, discovering new continents, and a new rout to India, papal bulls and excommunications had each their period of preeminence. Few in these days think much about excommunications, but when this term carried terror to the boldest minds, no use was made of another word, that is now of constant occurrence, and which is likely to go further and last longer, than any that has hitherto occupied the thoughts of mankind. Constitution is the

watchword of the day; this began to come into use pretty freely about sixty years ago, and has ever since been repeated in various quarters, till it is at length in the mouths of every people, is uttered in all dialects from the harsher ones of the Teutonic nations, to the more flowing tongues of Spain and Italy, and is reechoed from every hill and valley in the civilized parts of the earth.

The present aspect of the world, we mean that part of it possessed by the European race, whether inhabiting the old continent or the new, is deeply interesting to the philosophic observer. Under considerable varieties of feature and complexion, it every where offers a sympathetic expression. If we elevate ourselves to take a bird's eye view of it, we shall discern on all sides the progress of amelioration or at least a struggle for it. We shall hear the same cry for a constitution, even by some who know not precisely what it means; we shall perceive a universal feeling for a representation, sometimes without the understanding how to originate or define it; we shall observe on all this vast theatre a practical demonstration, or a vague yet strong conviction, that men have certain rights, which they are nobler and happier for enjoying, and among

all these various nations and climes, an irksome consciousness of the impolicy, and a determined struggle against the spirit of monopoly, whether it exist in governments, religion, or commerce; the progress of this struggle commonly beginning against the first of these by those who are most enthralled, and terminating with the last, by those who are most enlightened, who of course have already emancipated themselves from tyranny under the two former.

At the same time we shall discover throughout this whole survey, the vain and pernicious efforts of all governments, except those in North America, to counteract the spirit of the age. This opposition of sovereigns exhibits various degrees of alertness and violence in resisting the progress of reform, but all of them resist it; all of them look at innovation on the part of their subjects with aversion, and suffer it with reluctance.* Some of these are influenced only by the love of quiet, others are goaded by the thirst of power, whilst others are infatuated with the belief, that they can return to those times, when their subjects, habituated to acquiescence, were satisfied or discontented, as affairs were prosperous or otherwise, but without thinking that they had any responsibility, or any right of interference in either case. As to quiet, it is not the characteristic of an age of improvement, but so long as governments attempt to resist the feelings of the period in which they live, they must govern not only in a state of perpetual irritation, but run the risk of the most dreadful calamities, and eventual destruction. The means of inquiry are too widely diffused, the spirit of improvement is too strong to be stifled. Nulla vestigia retrorsum is the present motto of mankind; their views have all taken one direction; the impulse is more or less strong according to their knowledge, and if those who are at the head attempt to check its onward course, they will be borne down and trampled under foot.

• The famous declaration of a very distinguished member of the Massachusetts Peace Society to the Spanish Cortez, which must have been dictated in a phrenzy of arrogance or of fear, and was afterwards retracted, is one striking instance. A still more remarkable, though more temperate and detailed exposition of the views of the courts of Europe, may be found in the confidential letter of the Austrian Minister, Prince Metternich, to the Minister of the Grand Duke of Baden, and which was probably a circular to the German powers. This document, inserted in some of our papers (among others the Boston Daily Advertiser of Oct. 25, 1820) from the English ones, bears all the marks of authenticity, and develops perfectly the actual views of the sovereigns of Europe.

New Series No. 6.

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To understand this disagreement between ancient institutions and modern opinions, let us catch a hasty glance at their origin, The reader must not be alarmed if we take him some way back in chronology; we shall soon get through, we shall make but one step from the Appenines to the Alps, and from thence to the Pyrenees; having neither time nor inclination to lead him up and down the intermediate hills and vallies.-After the Roman empire was finally subverted, and arts and letters were buried in the ruins of its military power, its vast provinces became independent and began to govern themselves, in the deep obscurity of what are emphatically called the dark ages. All of them were barbarous, though in a different degree; the barbarity of some was of the kind which precedes civilization, that of others, the kind which follows its extinction. Each had its appropriate vices of ferocity or corrup tion. The fragments near the centre were, as might be expected, the most populous and the least extensive; some of them comprising only a walled city and a few gardens. These small states obtained nominally a republican form of government, which, imperfect as it was, procured them some distinction; yet in reality they were only the strongholds of factions, which did little more than vary the materials, that composed the anarchy of Europe. Society had two modifications, In Gaul, Britain, Lusitania, and Germany, the people were in the shepherd, or the first stages of the agricultural state; on the regulations of which had been engrafted a few customs and laws of the mistress of the world, while those provinces were held by her legions. In Italy the ruins of Roman jurisprudence and military civilization governed a people, enervated by luxury, fallen into decay and overrun by rude invaders, who brought many of their own rudest customs to patch the tattered robes of the imperial jurisdiction. The condition of Europe was thus composed on one side of warlike, ferocious tribes, under numerous chieftains, who had received some maxims and laws from their conquerors; and on the other, of an enervated, ruined people, vanquished in their turn, and forced to admit, with their new masters, many new customs. The cause of liberty was every way a loser. The privileges of Roman citizens, greatly diminished during the decline of the empire, were finally destroyed under Gothic invasion: while the eager followers of the transalpine leaders were forced gradually to renounce the primitive equity and