few of us were living. Again; it ought to be observed, that the display of our regard arises not from any exhibition of royal liberality. Our's is very far from being that worthless exultation (not unfrequently mistaken for the evidence of loyalty) which animates a selfish rabble, when their prince has provided for their amusement, or rather for the better security of his power, games and holy days and festivals, theatres and gladiator-shows, bull-baitings, sham naval victories, and autos de fé. We are neither shouting with indecent clamour at the triumphal entry of a conqueror who has annexed to our dominions a subjugated province, nor celebrating with unmeaning festivities the coronation of a monarch, or the marriage of a prince. The influence of a court or of a cabinet is not felt in our proceedings. So far from increasing or restraining us, our government has not even recommended the style in which our guest would be most suitably received. In every thing which characterises our rejoicings, the entire independence of the people, of their temporary agents, is abundantly manifested, and furnishes a palpable evidence of our national free agency. Such a demonstration of popular emotion could not possibly take place on the continent of Europe; for the interference of the ministry with a view to increase, to direct, to diminish or suppress it, would derogate much from its chief characteristic-its voluntary nature. The entire absence of all petty interests, which might render suspected the purity of our hospitality, is another peculiar feature in the event of which we speak. The popular excitement, so far from being created or biassed or promoted by political intrigue, has almost absorbed, for a time, the otherwise absorbing business of the day-the controversy for the presidential chair. But the unsuspected freedom of the language of the nation, curious and novel as it is, is by no means the proudest or most important circumstance by which it is attended. It is the cause, the holy cause of our rejoicings, that consecrates the jubilee. It is this which places it, at once, above the festivals of every other people on the face of the earth; and it is this which constitutes an ample reply to the cold-hearted sneers of some of our good fellow citizens, who have suddenly discovered how exceedingly anti-republican it is to display so much joy at the arrival of one single man. It is not the man. The man is nothing with all his merits, nothing-when compared to the glorious principle which governs our applause. He must be very little skilled in the knowledge of the nature of popular excitement, who does not understand the motive which impels the people of America to exert their whole strength, and their whole soul, in the present demonstration of their feelings. In the honours we confer on Lafayette, America is seizing a happy opportunity to give vent to the noblest of emotions that ever influenced the actions of a people. She has witnessed, an unengaged, but not an unconcerned spectator, almost from the date of her political existence, the most disgraceful spectacle that ever was or ever can be exhibited to the eyes of an indignant world. With shame, with sorrow, with wonder and disgust, she has watched the progress of an infamous conspiracy against the rights and happiness of freemen wherever they are found. She has seen this execrable object partially accomplished in the extinction of the liberties of Europe. A doctrine unknown, until now, even in the annals of despotism, has been boldly and unblushingly set up in the very centre of the civilized world. A strange and portentous alliance of arbitrary monarchs is established in the face of mankind; and the members of this unprecedented league, finding in their hands the means of almost unlimited oppression, scruple not to utter and maintain, with the most amazing insolence, maxims which the autocrats of ancient Macedonia and Persia had neither the wickedness to conceive, nor the measureless effrontery to avow. The tyrants of antiquity either limited their domination to their own enslaved subjects, or at least, when the lust of dominion urged them to schemes of foreign conquest, the attempt was made under pretences not half so insulting as the modern 'monarchical principle.' No American can hear, without shuddering, the potentates of Europe openly declare, that if every man, woman and child, in Spain, for example, shall ask to-morrow with one mind and with one voice, for a change in the existing government however inconsiderable, or the abolition of a law however oppressive, they shall not be indulged in their most moderate request, if one certain man, who is among them, a weak, wicked, ignorant and bigoted wretch, is unwilling to comply. And not only this, but if one of them dares to complain, his estate shall be confiscated, and he shall be imprisoned; and if he resists, he shall die. Yet with all our love of liberty and hatred of tyranny and tyrants, we have been compelled by an obvious and a necessary policy from forcibly opposing those iniquitous pretentions. Indignant as we feel at the profligate avowal of a doctrine so abhorrent to every feeling of a freeman, and afflicted as we are, that the blasphemous menaces of Austria and her despicable satellites should be promptly followed up by the actual execution of their threats, we are constrained by the first of obligations-our duty to ourselves to avoid all active interference in the unnatural and dishonourable controversy. Perhaps a more enlarged and liberal philanthrophy might require, that in a case where the commonest principles of justice are flagrantly and impudently outraged, any nation has a right to interfere in behalf of the oppressed; as instances not unfrequently occur in which every individual is justified in rescuing a fellow creature, by force, if he sees him exposed to the brutal assault of a ruffian. Whether this be a rule for the conduct of a nation or not, no one will deny that every comfort and encouragement we can possibly afford to the suffering nation without the overt act of actual hostilities, is not only freely allowed, but specially required. Of this right, America has always availed herself, and we confess that so far from desiring to oppose the demonstration of what, unjustly, has been termed the vanity of freedom, we never can regard as extravagant the extremest self-complacency which the nation can exhibit. For ourselves, we respect and would warmly encourage the most exuberant admiration of the principles of democracy; nor ever seek to restrain the most vehement detestation and abhorrence of the maxims set forth by the potentates of Europe. These are the feelingsthe love of liberty and the hatred of oppression-which animate the soul of every citizen who joins in the jubilee that welcomes Lafayette to our shores; and we doubt not, but even the meanest and most ignorant of them all, feels when he gazes on the festival of freemen, a wish that the tyrants of the old world were condemned to be spectators of the scene. We feel assured that many voices are lent to the general acclamation, with a desire, and almost a belief, that the cry may cross the sea and reach the ears of the enemies of freedom; and we candidly acknowledge that, cold and circumspective as age and experience have rendered us, we are still boy enough to anticipate with pleasure the annoyance and chagrin which the tyrants of Europe must endure, in contemplating a spectacle, in which a mighty republic uncontrolled by the influence or advice of its government, rises up with one accord to salute the approach of the champion of liberty. It is by no means improbable, that the time is not far distant, when the whole of the civilized world will be deeply and immediately interested in the great question of the proper source and disposition of national sovereignty. This controversy involves interests too powerful, relations too complicated, and prejudices too firmly established, to be settled by the influence of reason, accident, or time. The struggle between despots and their subjects for the right of legislation must, for obvious reasons, be decided by the sword; and although we feel a deep and a comforting conviction, that the day, however distant it may be, will inevitably come, when the world will find it hard to believe that a barbarous age once existed, in which governors were held to be wholly irresponsible to the governed; yet it needs but a very small share of political foresight to perceive that the contest between the sovereign de facto, and the sov ereign de jure, will be fiercely disputed and fearfully prolonged. We hope that we will not be regarded as timid or melancholy visionaries, if we venture to express our apprehensions that America may, ere very long, be compelled to take a part in the sanguinary conflict between the proprietors of kingdoms and their rebellious and exasperated subjects. In that event, if ever it should happen, the cause of liberty will mainly depend for success, on the gallant enthusiasm of her sons; and he who has at heart the temporal happiness of man, will ever look upon an ardent and inextinguishable love of freedom, as the best and only trust-worthy barrier against the advances of an enemy-far more destructive to that happiness than war, plague, pestilence, earthquakes, or famine-the pretensions of arbitrary monarchy. It is these considerations which prevent us from regarding as exaggerated, the loudest and wildest exhibition of the feelings of the nation; and which, in our eyes, give a character and a consequence to the most trifling testimonial of the people's affection. Let sentiments like these be cherished and encouraged, let the ruling passions of Americans be a love of their own institutions, and a hatred of legitimate oppression; and Liberty, we venture to predict, ere the lapse of many ages, shall be roused to go forth from the place of her refuge, till her voice shall be heard, and her arm shall be felt, to. the uttermost ends of the earth. The following account of an extraordinary piece of musical mechanism, is translated from an Italian Journal, the Antologia. The achievements of this machine appear to us, we acknowledge, so incredible, that we are almost tempted to believe that some Parisian wag (for the information of the editor of the Antologia, is derived from a Paris paper) has written it, to feed the strong appetite for the marvellous, which has been recently de veloped in that non-descript metropolis. Perhaps, however, some of our readers may have more faith than ourselves in the omnipotence of levers, pendulums and cog-wheels; and to them we refer, as an excellent subject of credulity, the following MECHANICAL CURIOSITY. In Paris there has been recently exhibited a singular piece of mechanism, denominated the componium,* or musical improvvisatore. When the instrument has received a musical subject with variations, applied to the machine by a process only known to the inventor, it immediately of itself, decomposes the variations, and reproduces their constituent members in all the diversity of possible permutation, and with all the fertility and address of the most copious and inexhaustible fancy. From these combinations, a series of compositions are produced, varied and determined by a principle so arbitrary, that not even the person who is best acquainted with the mechanical construction of the instrument can foresee the passages which the fancy of this automaton improvvisatore, at any given instant, shall suggest. Each of these variations lasts about a minute; and if we suppose that the instrument performed uninterruptedly, only one of the airs with all the variations which this machine is capable of affording, it would, without ever repeating a single combination, continue to furnish variations, not only for and for ages, but for so great a number of millions of ages, that although it might be arithmetically exhibited, it could not be expressed in ordinary language. Such is the import of the account of this marvellous discovery, as furnished and confirmed by some of the profoundest natural philosophers of Paris. years Alas!--sang the youthful Feramorz in the valley of Hussum Abdaul Alas! how light a cause may move A word unkind or wrongly taken- A breath, a touch like this has shaken.' I will not repeat the mournful catalogue of all the pernicious trifles, and formidable nothings, which, like the stings of a bee, * So accomplished an instrument certainly deserves a more classical ap pellation. |