and Madame Sand, and a hundred others, all | The Statesman's Manual. The Addresses and in good plain English, or equally facile French. These moderns are much more obscene, though not quite as gross as the ancients. The talk of antiquity was very like the small talk of Shakspeare's day, or the jests of lusty bachelors in our time. Chivalry, refined by Christianity, first made decency a rule, and forbade the sacrifice of modesty to wit. It seems to us, therefore, both a chivalrous and a Christian, or in one word, a gentlemanly precaution in Mr. Bristed, to have omitted the indecencies of Catullus in this critical and elegant selection. Those of our readers who read only Tennyson and Shelley, can have no idea of the manner and spirit of Catullus. Like nature's self, it combines simplicity, the result of severe criticism, with extreme grace and lightness. Like nature, or rather like the music of Mozart, or the canzonets of Haydn, seeming to affect the sense only, it secretly raises and harmonizes the spirits. It fulfills the first great end of poetry to please without debauching. It breathes a harmless and benign complacency; it smiles while it sings, is gay without effort, witty without point or edge, humorous without severity. "Let us live, my Lesbia," cries the sweet heathen, "and let us love, and count the saws of cross old fellows not worth a copper. Suns may set and rise again; but to us, when our short day is ended, the long night comes with its endless sleep. Give me a thousand kisses, then give me a hundred, and then a thousand more; and then a second hundred, and after these another thousand and a hundred; and when we have kissed many thousand times, let us rub out the score, and never know, nor let any envious fellow know, that there have been so many kisses." But now we have only metaphysics and the rights of man done into verse; or, if a love sonnet is written, it gathers no cream by standing. The Documentary History of the State of New York. Arranged under the direction of the Hon. CHRISTOPHER MORGAN, Secretary of State. By E. B. O'CALLAGHAN, M.D. Vol. I. Albany: Weed, Parsons & Co., Public Printers. 1849. Messages of the Presidents of the United States, Inaugural, Annual, and Special, from 1789 to 1849; with a Memoir of each of the Presidents, and a History of their Administrations. Also, the Constitution of the United States, and a selection of important documents and statistical information. Compiled from official sources, by EDWIN WILEmbellished with Portraits of the Presidents, engraved on steel, by Vistus Balch. In 4 vols. New York: Edward Walker, 114 Fulton-street, 1849. LIAMS. We are intimately acquainted with this work, and must speak of it in terms of unqualified praise. It is not only a good Political History of the United States, from the Inauguration of President Washington to that of General Taylor, but contains a collection of the Presidential Messages, special and general, of all the Administrations, each prefaced with, and followed by complete and clearly written historical chapters of the most unquestionable accuracy. To the young politician this work is indispensable. It will richly reward his most attentive study. To be master of its entire contents is to be as well informed as the reading of one work can make us, in the policy and conduct of both the great parties. To a lawyer's library the work is of the greatest importance. Every young men's circulating library will need a copy of it. Every debating club, and every State Department will require it. The politics even of the last year can rarely be gathered from newspapers. It is only by such histories and compilations as this, that we are to be thoroughly informed and guided to a just estimate of the present movement in the political world. The volumes are cheap, but well printed and neatly bound, and adorned with really excellent Engravings of all the Presidents. Pathology and treatment of the Asiatic Cholera, so called. By A. L. Cox, M. D. New York: John Wiley, 1849. This extremely valuable pamphlet contains all that is necessary to be known for the treatment of an ordinary case of Cholera.. Having On turning the leaves of this collection, sent | had personal experience of what are called the us by the courtesy of the Secretary of State, we find a variety of interesting and important papers, and ancient maps, relating to the early history of New York. Among others might be mentioned several papers relative to the French military expeditions against the colonies, and a variety of statistical documents on population, trade, and manufactures, from 1647 to 1757. "premonitory symptoms" of the disease, but which are in fact the commencement of the disease itself, we can recommend with full confidence the treatment prescribed in this Essay of DR. Cox's. With common sense and a few ordinary medicines, any person of good habits may check the disease at the outset. To avoid violent exertion, whether of mind or body, and by the judicious use of camphor, opium and THE AMERICAN REVIEW, No. XXI. FOR SEPTEMBER, 1849. : SHORT CHAPTERS ON PUBLIC ECONOMY. I. Constitutionality. It arrived only at its perfect and full development within the last few ages, and stands immoveable, by the accumulated strength of all its past existence. It came into perfect being, not by revolution, not by a change of principles, but by the native force of an internal life, which impelled it to throw off a foreign incumbrance, Ir is never to be lamented when men are driven to search into the foundation of the commonwealth; as it is necessary for the conduct of life that the divine and abstract principles of virtue should have a conscious existence in the intellect, and should be frequently agitated and discuss-and stand free in the vigor of independ ed; so, if we intend to maintain in their original purity and force, those ideas of authority, of right, and of obedience, upon which all government is founded, we must often reflect, and induce others to reflect upon them, in their simplicity. It is necessary to revive and fortify the spirit of the Constitution by frequent recurrence to the rights and opinions upon which it rests; tracing these to their principles, and casting an historic glance upon those conditions of society-those exigencies of humanity-from which they took their rise, and through which they became apparent; rights, in our own case, derived from a recognition of the imperious necessity of freedom to the full development of our nature; principles, grounded in human nature, tested by the experience of all time, and suggested as rules of legislation from an observation of the evils that arose upon their absence. Ours is not an hypothetical government; it was not erected upon an imaginary basis; the first fibres of its roots can be traced backward into the darkness of primeval liberty; its growth has been gradual through many centuries. | the races which gave birth to them. ant youth. It is a government of principles, not of prescription, nor of forms. Its traditional forms are few; it did not come down to us loaded with the corruptions of former ages, to be maintained by the timid and condemned by the wise. It is a government of necessity; it arose from necessity, and exists by necessity; it is therefore not subvertible while its moral conditions exist. But the necessity which gave it birth is not that with which the mathematics are conversant, nor the wants and desires of the grosser nature of man. The necessity with which our laws are in accordance is of a moral nature, and can be found only in the operation of moral causes. VOL. IV. NO. III. NEW SERIES. In the course of history, philosophers observe series of events signifying the existence and operation of certain divine and moral laws, by which the superior destiny of man is distinguished above his physical and sensuous destiny. Governments founded like ours upon a recognition of of justice, of faith, of beneficence, of honor, of liberty and of constancy, are imperishable governments; and die only with 15 |