take off his hat with sufficient deference. Something rough and unamiable there is, perhaps, in his manner. He has not learned to vindicate himself in the right way. That which is struggling in his bosom, is not to be softened and humanized in a moment. O nature! poor human nature!

- through errors and sorrows must thou work out thy welfare; and the thoughtful and considerate must wait for thee a little. Wait then, we say, and look a little farther. Does not this man become in time a far more intelligent being than his fellow in Europe; with a wider range of thought and culture? Is he not more hopeful and stronghearted? Does he not strike his spade into the soil that is his own, with a more willing energy and a more cheerful hope? Does not the light from the opening sky of his fortunes break clearer and stronger, into the cloud of strife and passion? Yes, he rises. Yes, he rises. He rises in character, in culture, in dignity and influence. He takes a place in society as hopeless to his brother in the Old World as the possession of fiefs and earldoms. His children after him rise to the highest places in the land.

This is a picture of the man in this country. This, in some sort, is a picture of the country. Is there a man on earth, with a human heart in his bosom, that does not rejoice in the spectacle; that does not sympathize with the experiment; that does not say, God speed it? No, there is no man. But there are and they are not a few distorted from the shape and nobleness of men, who hate the experiment, and wish it nothing but ill. Clothed in the robes of selfish grandeur, they would as soon think of taking their dogs into an equality with themselves, as of taking the mass of mankind. With this spirit is our quarrel. With this spirit is the quarrel of this country. And by all the hope of Christianity and faith in God, do we trust and believe that this country shall vindicate the great cause which is committed to it.

Yes, humanity—not knighthood nor nobility—the great, wide humanity has its first, perhaps its last, fair, free chance here. Sighing and broken through ages, it wandered to this new world. It struck the virgin soil, and forth, from the great heart of the land, burst the word, FREEDOM! The waters of a thousand spreading bays and shores heard it. The winds took it up, and bore it over

the wide sea. It smote the sceptre of injustice and oppression. It shook the thrones of the world. This is no mere figure it is true. There is nothing which all the crowned tyrannies of the world fear and hate, like the example of America. We say not, the crowns of the world. We have no hostility to royalty as such. We have no hostility to it, if it can possibly be reconciled with a just and temperate freedom: and we see no necessary incompatibility between the two. But all the injustice that reigns, all the tyranny, all the oppression that reigns in the world, has its practical controversy now, with the example of America. If we can stand, they must fall. This is the great controversy and may God defend the right!

Would that it were possible to impress upon the people of this country, a sense of their responsibility to God and men to the world and to the hopes of future ages. We have humbly attempted to defend our cause against the misgivings of the timid at home, and the mistakes of those who assail us from abroad. The fact is, they do not know this country. We perhaps ought to know better; and yet we, the most of us, have had no opportunity for comparing it with others. We have never seen an American traveller, who in a just and manly spirit has really looked into the state of things in Europe, that did not bless, on his return, the land of his birth. But they, we repeat, do not know us. They have no idea of our fortunate condition. They have no idea of the free-hold farms, the neat and thriving villages, and the happy and improving communities that are spread all over this land. They do not know the spirit of this country. And yet we wonder that they do not observe, that almost all the great moral and humane reforms of the age have proceeded from it; Popular Education, the Temperance Reform, the Prison Discipline Reform, the kinder treatment in Asylums for the Insane, the Ministry for the Poor in Cities, and the Peace Society. Can the country be so morally bad, out of which such things have sprung?

But it is time that we should draw to a close. There has been one great example of Republican Government in ancient times, and it failed. We have stood upon its mournful ruins; and when asked there, what most impressed us in Rome, we answered, "To stand still and

think that this is Rome!" To stand indeed upon the Janiculum or upon the Gardens of Sallust, and cast your eye around you; to think of the stupendous histories that have made their theatre within the range of your vision; to think what has passed there, there where that momentary glance of your eye falls, is to submit your mind to a more awful meditation than pertains to any other spot of earth, with one only exception. But those hills upon which has been enthroned the grandeur of successive Empires what is written upon their now desolate seats? What is the lesson taught to the world by the sublimest history in the world? No historian, we doubt, has answered this question; for the philosophy of history is yet to be written.

But, one question there is above all, which presses itself upon the American traveller, as he gazes upon that theatre of the old Roman story, and that is, are we, who have set the great modern example of Republican freedom, to be discouraged by the failure of that ancient experiment ? Does the awful shadow of the past, that forever lingers amidst those majestic ruins, point to the grand experiment that is passing on these shores, and say, it is all in vain!" to the labors of our statesmen and sages, and say, 'they are all in vain!'-to the blood that has stained our hills and waters, and say, it has been spilt in vain!' This is the great question that issues from that sepulchre of Roman grandeur shall America fail?

God forbid! She must not, she will not fail. Christianity is here. Educated man is here. Vigor and hope, promise and prayer are here. Heaven, that spreads its fair sky over a fertile land, is with us. May it breathe its blessing into our people's heart, rich as our teeming earth; fresh and bright as the light and breezes of our sky!

0. D.

NOTICES OF RECENT PUBLICATIONS.

American Biography. By JEREMY BELKNAP, D. D. With Additions and Notes. By F. M. HUBBARD. New York: Harper & Brothers. 1843. 3 vols. 12mo.

THE Harpers deserve the thanks of the American public for this reprint of Belknap's biographies, in a form at once so neat and convenient, in a clear, large type. The edition is enriched with notes and additions by F. M. Hubbard. These additions and notes we have not examined with critical accuracy, but from the cursory survey we have been able to give them, we are convinced that they augment greatly the value of the publication. The additions to the life of Raleigh greatly exceed in quantity the original biography, and very copious notes are given to the lives of John Robinson, Bradford, Brewster, Winthrop, and others. In giving an account of his labors, the Editor says, that he has "re-examined all the statements of facts made by Dr. Belknap, and compared them with the authorities he used, and with others which were not accessible when he wrote. It has been very seldom that he has found occasion to differ from Dr. Belknap, and that most frequently in cases in which documents recently discovered have thrown light upon subjects which the want of them rendered necessarily obscure. It is believed that no work has been published of such magnitude, embracing such a variety of persons and events, and extending over a period of more than six hundred years, in which so few, and those so unimportant, errors are to be found." This is high, and we believe, deserved testimony to the value of Dr. Belknap's work.

Under the biography of John Robinson, we have a note giving some account of Robert Brown, from whom the more rigid among the Puritans took the name of Brownists. Brown was a near relation of Cecil, the Lord Treasurer, who often befriended him in his troubles. He was a violent man, and the "last forty years of his life were passed in obscurity and contempt. He used to boast that he had been committed to thirty-two prisons." Fuller says that he "was of an imperious nature, offended if what he affirmed but in common discourse were not received as an oracle." He adds that he had a wife "with whom for many years he never lived, and a church wherein he never preached." When above eighty years old, he, in a passion, struck a con

stable, who came to collect a tax of him, and for his stubbornness before the magistrate was committed, and carried on a feather bed, in a cart, to a jail in Northampton, where he died, in 1630. Mr. Hubbard observes, that "neither by learning, nor weight of character, nor by any historical evidence, can he be considered the founder of that sect of ultra Puritans which has borne his name. The sect had existed in much privacy long before him, and were called Brownists not so much from their own choice, as from the purpose of their enemies to bring reproach upon them, by identifying, in the popular opinion, the whole body with the excesses and weakness of that restless and unstable man." Robinson, it is well known, was very anxious that his people should "shake off the name of Brownist, being a mere nickname and brand to make religion odious, and the professors of it, to the Christian world."

We regret the decision of the Harpers to exclude from the present edition the lives of Cabot, Smith, and Hudson, “for the reason that memoirs of the same individuals, somewhat more full, have been already published by them in former volumes of their series." The lives, as written by Dr. Belknap, are short, and would have added very little to the bulk of the volumes, and the work is incomplete without them. We should have preferred, too, to see the original title to the work retained in full.

L.

The Acts of the Apostles; with Notes, chiefly explanatory; designed for Teachers in Sabbath Schools and Bible Classes, and as an Aid to Family Instruction. By HENRY J. RIPLEY, Professor of Sacred Rhetoric and Pastoral Duties in the Newton Theological Institution. Boston: Gould, Kendall & Lincoln. 1844. 12mo. pp. 334.

PROFESSOR RIPLEY'S Notes on the Gospels, published some years ago, enjoy, we believe, high reputation with the denomination of which he is a member, and have received favorable testimonials from other portions of the religious public. The Notes on the Acts, just issued, must, we should think, meet with a similar friendly reception. The work is really one of no ordinary merit. Keeping in view the object for which it is designed, which is expressed in the title above given, we hesitate not to say that it is well adapted to its end, and is marked by some peculiar excellencies. It is scholar-like, yet simple and intelligible, loaded with no useless learning, yet evincing, by its general spirit and tone, a familiar acquaintance with the best theological literature. It furnishes aid where it is needed, and does not, like many Commentaries and Notes, "encumber