tunately for him he got a drill-sergeant for a schoolmaster-yet even this state is better than a stand-still attitude; for there is no greater curse that a nation or an individual can suffer under, than apathy of thought. While these events were taking place on Continental Europe, England was also undergoing the remodeling influence of the times. Among the greatest events that ever happened in her polit ical life, must be placed the passage of the Catholic Emancipation Bill, and that of the Reform Bill. These two measures were pregnant with important meaning, not only for Great Britain but for the whole civilized world, since they were a political weatherglass of Europe. Thus forcibly pushed forward, England cannot arrest her onward career; she must go on from reform to reform: her Chartism, the Free-kirk movement of Scotland, the Irish Repeal Association, and this AntiCorn-Law-League, are but legitimate concomitants and consequences of the first impulse and signs of the ever progressive nature of freedom. Through these signs, the voice of humanity, of justice, of equality and freedom, speaks in thundering accents to the abettors of abuse and oppression.

Thus the spirit of liberty goes on from one conquest to another, trampling under foot the corrupt institutions of the feudal ages; and its strength never yet was so accumulated and threatening as it is at the present moment. The infamous means by which crowned heads succeeded in ruining the late Polish Revolution, have not proved very efficient in allaying their apprehensions. The Poles, obliged to flee their country, brought to Western Europe the torch of liberty, lighted at their own firesides; and in their passage, every spirited and generous people came forward to ignite their own long prepared materials at the fire that was consecrated by the patriotic blood of a nation. The fire was kindled, and Europe now lies

on a volcano that may burst at the hour least expected. The premonitory signs have already appeared.

Since the time of the blessed Apostles, there have been but few true teachers of the doctrines of the lowly Jesus for the poor and oppressed of this earth; and none like that earnest follower of the Nazarene, the Abbé de la Mennais : himself a priest, he has exposed the hollowness of his order by showing how wide are their teachings from the teachings of Christ. He has drawn upon his head the curses of Potentates; the Pope has excommunicated him; but he cares little for these when his conscience and his God approve, and when the oppressed, the honest and intelligent, bless him. His teachings have brought back to Christianity many of those who once saw in it but an imposition on humanity for the benefit of royalty and the priesthood.

Michelet and Quinet are other instruments in the hands of Providence to advance the condition of the human mind. For a long time, the Jesuits were working covertly to sap the foundations of liberty, and latterly they have believ ed themselves rapidly advancing their scheme, when Michelet and Quinet tore away the mask and revealed their true aspect to the eyes of France. The efforts of the king and bishops who supported them, availed them but little; the French public branded them as culprits, enemies to the domestic, social and political happiness of mankind; and the enlightened world concurred in the verdict. And as if to remove all shadow of doubt from the mind of the public about the correctness of its judgment, the Rev. Father Gioberti, an eye-witness of priestly iniquity, and who was persecuted, exiled, and excommunicated for having dared to be an honest man, came forward with his revelations and put the last seal to the ignominy of the Society of Jesus.* The energy of free principles

begins to work still deeper and deeper in the bosoms of men. In an obscure vil lage of the ancient dominion of Poland, there was a poor honest minister of the gospel, troubled for a long time with doubts about the faith that inconsiderate youth led him to embrace. After a protracted struggle, Czerski (Chersky), with a spirit fully revolutionized, began to proclaim a spiritual war against the mummeries and falsehoods of Catholic Rome. John Ronge was called from the heart of Silesia to the same great work. These two apostles of sincere and enlightened piety and the true doctrine of life, are paving the way for a new order of things.

Omitting its minor oscillations, we have pointed out only the grand movements of the spirit of freedom to show that so many events, so much bloodshed through so many years, could alone bring us to the point where the Christian world now stands. Since the battle of Bunker hill, every nation in the civilized world has more or less been agitated by this unslumbering spirit; and however little unsuccessful their individual efforts have been, still the cause of freedom, the interests of humanity, have decidedly gained ground. The divine impulses of liberty are like the swelling of the sea;beginning first with a gentle ripple, the movement soon rises into a wave; a mighty billow soon follows, carrying irresistibly before it the piers and bastions that defend, to sea-ward, the "towered Castles of Tyranny." Commencing with the achievement of the American Independence, every succeeding war partook more and more of the character of a struggle between the two antagonist principles-despotism and freedom--even when the combatants did not avow it. Not withstanding, at times, apparent disadvantages, the strength of free principles rose after each successive struggle, with a new vigor; and the masses of the civilized world now sit in sullen silence, brooding over the last great conflict that sooner or later must come. That the time is near at hand, can be inferred from several important facts now transpiring. The great fact to be first considered is the power now belonging to the opinion of the masses. A nation demands quietly of its ruler, whose power is absolute,

a constitution which should circumscribe his will, and secure the rights of the people. The King of Prussia does not refuse the demand flatly; he hesitates, he cajoles his subjects, he temporizes; but if he have any sagacity or foresight he must feel that the sooner he complies with their wishes the better for him. Even the Autocrat of the North thinks it is worth his while to calm the indignant feeling he has aroused throughout the civilized world by his savage outrages committed upon innocent Polish nuns. He sends to the courts of Europe his official denial of those barbarous persecutions, not because he cares for the opinion of the crowned heads, but through them and their organs, he expects to soothe the just indignation of public opinion, which might even react upon his own degraded subjects. But to believe the denials of him, whose government is mendacious to a proverb, against the averments of those nuns of spotless life, who bear marks of insult and outrage on their very persons, would be as impartial and just as to take the testimony of a notorious criminal in evidence of his own innocence.

Metternich, an inveterate malefactor, who has wrung blood from the pores of many innocent and great men at Spielberg, as unhappy Italy can testify, sent his diplomatic notes to different courts, charging the abuses of the Polish nobility as the causes of the horrible scenes of Jacquerie that took place in the pending insurrection of Gallicia, to shelter his government and himself from the brand of infamy which the European world cast upon him. But the civilized world knows, whatever diplomatists may say to the contrary, that he himself was the instigator of those atrocious butcheries, without regard to age or sex, as a means to

counteract and thwart the rising of the people. Such plans of atrocities, such stratagems, can only be concocted at the seat of Jesuitism, where once before, not only an absolution for the crime was granted, but an encouragement given by a Jesuit father confessor to Maria Theresa, joining the despoilers of Poland. Thus these infamous personages pay an involuntary homage to the advancing majesty of the opinion of the people.

Another fact of great importance, in connection with the advance of the spirit of liberty, is to be noticed in the growth of the feeling of nationality among civilized nations-a nationality that is Christian, rejoicing in the happiness of other nations, and limiting itself to the natural boundaries of territory and affinities of language and habits of a people, and which, only commanding respect for itself, never can be used by despots as a means of personal ambition, of conquest and oppression. Germany is a striking instance in point; her rulers could not dupe her as they once did. This feeling has been growing stronger of late years, even among the Slavic branches, which once were thought to have been completely Germanized; the Bohemians, for instance, begin to recall the past glory of their national existence and literature.

The Poles never have allowed their national feeling to lay dormant even in their greatest trials; they never will, happen what may to their native land. The Hungarians are also assiduously cultivating their vernacular tongue, and studying their history, much to the apprehension of the Austrian Emperor.

This feeling of nationality incites nations to an honorable rivalry, and teaches them to esteem one another, while it is also promoting amicable relations which daily force upon their minds, that they are children of one Father above, and that it is the business of kings and the devil alone to keep them asunder. This kind of nationality is destined to be, at no distant period, the lever of mighty events, when the geographical boundaries of nations shall take a more natural form than what has pleased the arrogance of crowned heads to mark out.

Having thus led our reader over the path of advancing Freedom, we have now brought him to the point from which he can take a better view of the Slavic race whose myriads cover the territory stretching from the shores of the Adriatic to the Ural Mountains, and from the Caspian and Black seas to the Baltic; and comprising the ancient little republic of Ragusa, Dalmatia, Carniola, Croatia, Carinthia, Styria, Slavonia, Bosnia, Servia, Bohemia, Moravia, Silesia, Poland in its ancient limits, and European Russia.

It is somewhat remarkable that a race, so numerous as the Slavonic, should be enslaved to the degree it is; and yet, reflecting upon its character, abundant and extenuating causes appear for the fact.

That it has not been so always, the annals of Servia, Bohemia, the Republic of the Great-Nowogrod, of Ragusa and Poland testify. To a great extent the virtues of the Slavonians contributed to their ruin; they are, as a race, frank and hospitable to a degree not surpassed by other civilized nations, and thus they often harbored in their midst cunning enemies as friends; their love of rural and quiet life indisposes them to commercial and maritime pursuits, and thus they have allowed themselves to be deprived, by more adventurous and less scrupulous intruders, of the advantages which the mastery of a sea-coast can confer upon a nation; the decidedly democratic tendencies of their social organization, notwithstanding occasional unimportant exceptions, prevented among them the rise of a few and powerful famlies, whose ambition could sway the people, and lay a foundation of future empires, as was the case with the Germans, whose brood possesses almost all the thrones of the civilized world. The perseverance in undertakings with which they are blessed, may in time compensate them for the disadvantages resulting from the above virtues; and trusting to their courage, which has never abandoned them, they may yet reconquer their rights.

Another reason that may also be assigned for their present political condition, is in the fact that the Reformation was propagated in an unknown tongue to the mass of the Slavonians, and the language of their enemies; and thus, the benefits that resulted from that religious movement to other nations, were withheld from them in a great measure. Their own, and the first reformer, John Huss, unfortunately came in a time when man's spiritual benefactors were burned alive, and the seed of reform he planted was blasted before it became a vigorous shoot.

The nations to whose fortunes the destinies of the Slavic race are more or less chained, are Russia, Bohemia, Servia and Poland. There can be little good expected for the Slavonians from Russia; for she is aiming at a universal submission of that race to her sceptre only to oppress them. The mass in Russia, plunged in abject servitude and gross ignorance, and under the control of an ignorant and vicious hierarchy, whose head is the Emperor, cannot contribute much to the development of free insti

tutions: in fact, the administration of the country being conducted on the plan of a military camp, it cannot but crush all moral and intellectual capacities of the people. Russian civilization, by way of distinction, may be called a military civilization with Asiatic pomp, possessing all the vices of Western Europe, with scarcely any of its redeeming qualities. The emperor and the serf are the two opposite extremes, separated by fourteen classes of military rank, (every station in life being reduced to a military value,) each bearing upon the other with more or less weight; and, of course, he at the bottom of the scale suffers the most. In a society thus organized, subordination and implicit obedience to superiors become cardinal virtues, whose tendencies are not at all favorable to manly independence. Under such a state of circumstances, the only source of a change for the better for the people, is to be looked for in the officers of the army not of too exalted a rank; and it is precisely among these that the noble Col. Pestel has sown the seeds of freedom which sooner or later must come up, and save the nation. Without this change Russia is but an evil genius, as well of the Slavonians as of the whole human race, that cannot be crushed too soon.

Out of more than fifteen millions of Slavonians that are under the sway of Austria, Bohemia, whose language is spoken by more than five millions, and written by as many more, is exerting a power ful influence upon the destinies of her Slavic neighbors. Although her glory has departed since the bloody battle of Prague, of 1620, when the savage Ferdinand II., of Austria, with his crew of Jesuits, took possession of the Bohemian throne and altar, and when the noblest of her sons that were not butchered had to flee for safety; yet it left a monument in the hearts of the people that withstood the ravages of those tempestuous daysher language has survived, saving some fragments of its once noble literature from the flames of the sixty thousand manuscripts kindled by the ruthless hands of the Society of Jesus.

The Bohemians are spirited and industrious people far advanced in the arts of peace. Since the year 1826, their national spirit showed itself in a greater attention to the culture of their own language, and which attention has been constantly increasing: thus their past glories are brought back to their memo

ries, and the desire for freedom and independence is waxing strong; and sooner or later they will be able to shake off the incubus of the Austrian Catholicism and bondage that are now weighing them down.

The present condition of Servia is another guaranty of the future prospects of the Slavic family. Her geographical position, with her political institutions, will enable her to maintain the independence she gained in 1842, after the struggle of thirty-eight years. She has baffled Russian intrigues, and freed herself from the Turkish power; and now she is enjoying democratic institutions that know but one class-the people, and a Prince— the ruler, whose grandfather was but a common peasant. Possessing a rich soil, enclosed by mountains and a river, and an unembarrassed treasury, the Servians, full of energy and courage, although falling a little short of a million of souls, can muster a hundred thousand effective militia that could cope successfully with an enemy twice as strong. The blessings of education are extended to the whole mass of the people, who to a man are fired with patriotic enthusiasm for the progress of the country; to forward which, one of the most effective means-the culture of their language-is not neglected.

Under so favorable circumstances, Servia cannot fail to exert a powerful and beneficial influence upon the interests of the Slavonians in general, and especially upon the five millions of those who speak her language. As she is the most fortu nate of the Slavic nations, she will be a focus from which the beneficent light of liberty and equality will be shed upon the political horizon of the Slavonian race. All these political convulsions, at which we have but glanced, were so many centres from which a powerful moral influence sprang, and mingling in daily life, in spite of watchful despots, has changed men's views in religion, law or politics; and hence the present power of public opinion, to whieh even tyrants are compelled to yield. As a striking instance of its advance and its irresistible power in matters of religion, we may notice the fact that, at this moment, many priests of the Church of Rome are vigorously advocating the marriage of the Catholic clergy-an evidence that good influences have even reached the heart of this edifice of corruption. Another instance of the irresistible power of public opinion has been witnessed in matters of law.

Austria, after subduing Italy, gave her a code of laws, which is still in force in her own provinces, and by virtue of which a barbarous distinction of classes was introduced, subjecting the peasantry to corporeal punishment. Not a word was uttered, but the Italian public received this Austrian boon in such a sullenness that the imperial government had to abrogate the laws before three mouths were over. And now, in consequence of better laws, a simple Syndic can arrest a prince or a priest as well as a peasant, without regard to their rank.

Such are the triumphs and power of public opinion, and of the spirit of freedom that animates and directs it in our times.

By thus showing the causes and their effects now in action out of Poland, we have prepared our readers to enter upon the consideration of the future prospects of the Polish cause, and of the elements of its success within the Polish nation itself.

The powers that have partitioned Poland, represent her to the world through their paid organs, as demoralized and unfit to govern herself, while they are using all means to effect her demoralization. Religion, education, and degrading laws, have been made use of to accomplish their infernal purposes. But notwithstanding the influences of some corrupt priests, inefficient or perverted education, and the premium upon vices-as the system of espionage testifies-the Polish nation has virtue enough to see the condition into which her enemies are plunging her, and to desire its amelioration. It is prohibited to preach temperance to the Polish peasantry, that intemperance and its concomitants should not be arrested. If a wealthy Pole is a spendthrift and dissipated, the government offers him means in order to rid him the sooner of his estate and character. It passes oppressive laws for the peasantry, and makes the nobles their executors, to engender ill-feeling between the two orders, and to lay the whole odium of such laws upon the shoulders of the nobility; it favors complaints against them, representing itself as always ready to do justice to the complaining peasant!

In spite of these villanous means, those governments are far from attaining their object. Intelligence and virtue are indigenous to the Polish soil, and cannot be entirely extirpated. The Poles are

represented by their enemies as averse to improvement, and that their nobility are arrogant and oppressive to their peasant ry, or serfs, as they would have it. But to see the utter falsehood of these assertions, it is only necessary to recur to history. The Polish nobility are not a feudal order of men, as is the case elsewhere; and the Polish peasant is not a serf. The Polish nobles sprung from the midst of their people; they won their titles on the field of battle, in defence of their country, or at the seats of learning, and thus their feelings have never been alienated from the people. As early as the commencement of the 14th century, the serfs that were taken as prisoners of war were freed. The relation of the Polish peasant to the lord is the same as that of a tenant in England or in the Western States of this country, to the owner of the soil; he pays for the use of the land he cultivates, either in labor, produce, or money. The Poles have always shown themselves ready to improve the condition of their country in every respect; but their enemies would never allow them so to do. And yet, notwithstanding such obstacles, the Polish mind not only has kept pace with the times, but also contributed not a little to advance them.

The Constitution of the 3d of May, 1791, is an evidence that the Poles have recognized their past errors, and wished to remedy the evils, but they were interfered with and prevented. It was the most liberal constitution then known in Europe, and received the hearty approval of the best and wisest men of the age. Whatever defects it may have when viewed from this distant period, it will nevertheless be acknowledged that its crowning glory is the clause authorizing its revision every twenty-five years. Considering the duration of human life, there is, every quarter of a century, an equili brium of moral powers between the generation coming on, and that passing off, the stage; conservatism balancing the spirit of progress: hence the wisdom of the proviso. At this time the constitution would have been twice revised, and thus suited to the experience, wants and demands of the progressing age. The framers of that instrument deserve great credit for having exhibited a higher degree of foresight than is common in legislators; for in their time the modern progress was not so discernible as it is now; it had not then the impetus which it since has acquired. The efficient measures that