"I would not for a hundred thousand pounds an hour allow those CornLaws to continue! Potosi and Golconda put together would not purchase my assent to them." Argument indeed is used no longer; the keen edge of ridicule is now employed. The tide has turned strongly in favor of free trade; and its enemies are giving away before the irresistible movements of public opinion. The middle and the lower classes are united in interest and in purpose, and now that their energies are becoming aroused, and their minds enlightened, we may expect that deadly blows will be dealt, not merely against the interests of the landed gentry, but against their splendid aristocracy itself.

It is a distinctive feature of the English character, to be slow and cautious in action. They are by nature conservative, and even when surrounded by evils will deliberate long before they take measures for their relief. "In our wildest periods of Reform, in the long Parliament itself, you notice always the invisible instinct to hold fast by the Old; to admit the minimum of the New." Old and time-honored customs are revered; institutions gray with the dust of years are bound to their hearts by the most sacred associations; every spot of their country, even its barren rocks and cliffs of chalk, are objects of veneration. They are content to walk in the ways of their ancestors, to endure the inconveniences that they endured, and they will hesitate much before they adopt new opinions, or venture to walk in new paths. But John Bull, with all his patriotism and sturdiness of character, and with all his dislike of change, has also much good sense, and can be taught, as he has been to some extent, though it has been a terrible lesson, to become a Reformer. Legislation for privileged orders and class interests has taught him that he must act or die; that he must manfully assert his independence and his rights, or endure the evils and degradation of slavery. Hence it is that we have seen those violent insurrectionary movements among the lower classes, and hence also have their employers and friends, men of rank, of wealth, and of influence, taken up on the side of those great and momentous measures, which are destined to promote the well-being, and to work out a more tolerable mode of life for the people. These are but skirmishes in the war which is now going on between the Aristocracy and the People, and which will result, we verily belive, if not in the downfall of the former, at least in the loss of many of their rights and privileges.

It may seem extravagant to talk of the decay of England. We hope that it may be, and that all predictions of her decline may fail of accomplishment. With one of her own writers, we hope that " she is but in the morning of her existence, bursting into light, and betokening a golden harvest, not only for those of her own race and lineage, but for all who desire the inappreciable blessings of a Christianized civilization." But when we regard the evils in her government, deep-seated if not ineradicable, when we see her governors resorting to temporary expedients instead of remedies, and wasting their time in the bitter and acrimonious strife of party; when we behold a country, whose social edifice, if it is not built of human skulls, cemented with human blood, like the temple of Tescalipoca, the Mexican deity, is composed cer

tainly of very discordant materials-a country that has acquired its vast power and greatness, its almost unbounded territorial and oceanic supremacy, at the expense of the groans and woes of its subjects,

we begin to think it is time for birds of strange augury to appear in the air, and that a crisis of some sort is approaching. And who is there who would not welcome any event that may tend to elevate the poor man, and bring about a better organization of labor?

The times are indeed full of change. A band of men, neither few in number nor insignificant in character, have arisen, who are the zealous advocates of popular rights and political reform. The people heretofore, through want of leaders to concentrate and direct their energies, have acted blindly and to little purpose. Their measures may have been rash and ill-advised, but they have had one good effect; the minds of men have been directed to their condition and wants. They have obtained leaders from the higher and wealthier classes, and those too who are by no means weak and ignorant; who are not extravagant dreamers nor rash enthusiasts; who are not advocates of vain shadows or plausible sophisms, but are sound and practical thinkers, energetic and determined actors. They are not seeking to injure their country; on the contrary, they would peril their lives in her defense; and in aiming to promote the cause of popular education, and bring about the consummation of a freer and nobler system of commercial policy, they are advocating not only the true interest of their own country, but of the world.

As Americans we can but sympathize with the efforts of these reformers, nor do we think that the true friend of man has cause to apprehend danger from the democratic feeling that exists in England. In the existence and growth of this feeling, we recognize no tendency that can be promotive of evil or destructive of good, no wild radicalism that will sweep away all the bulwarks of law and order, and introduce vague and unsettled notions of government; but we see in it the progress of those high principles of liberty, which animate every free, manly heart, and an indication that men are obtaining truer perceptions of their own nature and destiny. The end that is aimed at is merely the removal of evils that are to be found in existing institutions, by peaceable means, and the result will be, as we trust and hope, an improvement in the individual and social well-being of her subjects.

THE BIRTH OF THE STARS.

THERE was no Sun in Heaven; no moon looked down
With pensive ray upon the lonely world,

Nor any star burned on the brow of night;
And one might deem no heedful Seraph's eye
Watched o'er the weal of this neglected earth.
From pole to pole a concave vast and black
Hung as some pall might hang o'er Nature's grave;
And old gray Ocean with a hoarse loud moan
Rolled round the central globe his sleepless wave:
The voice of many waters! Not a sound
Of bird, or beast, or whispering zephyr's sigh,
Or Angel's song, or man's profaner lay,
Blent their low notes with the eternal anthem.
The world was Ocean-in his circuit vast
He found no shore to chafe his hoary mane
And change his sad song to wild breaker's roar,
Save that, where now the great Sahara lies
Under the blazing equatorial sun,

A mountain ridge rose beetling o'er the sea.

A thousand miles in front a rough-drawn profile
Swung in the tide that laved its rocky base.

And mountain piled o'er mountain backward stretched
To where old Nile his annual tribute pours
Of golden plenty o'er Egyptian fields-
Names known in after age when time began,
Andes on Andes piled, and Alps o'er Alps!
As 'twere a structure built by rebel Titans
To climb away from "Chaos and old night."

An unnamed continent of desert gloom

The sky was crowded with its mountain peaks

Like aged hemlocks on some barren hill

Lifting their withered arms in silent air,

Deep scarred with thunder and red lightning's breath,-
Sad witnesses of elemental strife.

Up the dull sky, all tremulous and red,
Aurora darts her wavering streams of flame
Like angry serpents springing on their prey.
In her disastrous light the sea was blood;
The savage landscape stands distinctly forth-
Cape, promontory, mountain-all on fire-
Each precipice and valley to its utmost depth
Brighter than noon-day. Suddenly she starts
And swifter than the wing of thought flies back

VOL. IX.

To hide herself by her own northern pole,
And twilight spreads again o'er land and sea.
The mighty sweep of the advancing main
Vented its vain rage on the granite shore ;
The refluent wave beat backward by the rock
In parted stream rolled bellowing round the isle,
To make again the circuit of the sphere.

Thus while eternity's slow ages passed,

The assailant waves made war upon the rock,
And ever and anon some beetling cliff
Or promontory huge sank in the deep.
Oft Spirits, bound on speedy errand-wing

To distant worlds, paused, hovering o'er the deep,
And wondering saw, shook from their seated base,
Whole mountains plunge into the sullen main,
Like fragments broken from eternity!

Then, while in Heaven the everlasting song
Through many a circling age its measures filled,

The angel-messenger with laboring wing

Above the sea staid his swift flight again—

Again beheld another rocky cliff

Bow his bald head into the rushing wave;

Till in his thought the crumbling continent
Became a kind of horologe, whereon
The Sea notched cycles of eternity.
Let computation take most rapid note,

And let each unit be a century,

Or every number be a space as great

As all earth's years have been-in vain! in vain!

The baffled mind turns back upon itself,

Aweary of its fruitless zeal to reach,

What thought of man or angel cannot grasp

The ages that elapsed ere the last shore

Sank to its grave.

*

* The world was water only.
It was a sepulchre in which lay buried
All form and substance, and all hope of life.
Full many an age in darkness circled round
Beyond all thought and number to compute,
Save thought of Him who knows and numbers all.
Sudden in Heaven, bright, tremulous, alone
A star came forth from the Almighty's hand;
She was all eye, all hearing, soul, and sense,
And onward, through ethereal path prescribed,
Moved with a calm and boundless consciousness,
Making wide inroads on old Night's domain,

20

With her still brightness-singing all the while
Unto herself a low sweet melody

That gushed spontaneous; such the joy young life
Feels in its fresh and spotless purity.

At the far confines of her radiant realm,
Above, below, on every side she saw
A mighty sphere of Darkness bended round,
And on its mystic wall her struggling ray
Fantastic played: vacuity unknown, and dread;
As when within a cave of boundless gloom
One little candle throws abroad its beams,
Waging vain war with the surrounding Dark,
Brief space of light hemmed round by Infinite!
Long time she gazed upon the void expanse,
Waiting some spirit's eye, or tongue responsive,
But waited long in vain, till her glad song
To plaintive cadence sank, then fell to silence.
So when, amid the briny waste of waves,
The ravening sea hath gorged his hungry maw
With a whole fleet of stately galleons,
One sad survivor from the billow's crest
Climbs up a lonely rock and looks abroad:
Alone amid the elements! the wave and sky
Are round about him with their solitudes.
Oh! how his heart unutterably longs
For some kind ear to list his latest breath,
Some friendly eye to mark his watery grave.
Thus on her joyless course the sprite was passing,
And busy thought with a most fruitless zeal
Sketching her sad and solitary future,
When on her startled ear, with gradual growth
Did steal the voice of waters-yet afar
Beyond her light arose the wild uproar,

As 'twere a buried earthquake's awful voice.
Then slowly heaved from out the rayless void
This pendulous round world, with the black wave
Swift rolling o'er her sunken continents,

And deep within the bosom of the sea,

The orbéd radiance of one bright star

Looked forth with spiritual ray serene;

Hope cheered her drooping heart once more, and Joy
Relumed her waning eye to find herself
In the wide universe not all alone.
Then, with unutterable longings filled
To hold communion with her sister spirit,
Oft she accosted the vain watery image,
Till baffled Love resigns his vain attempt.