66 peace reigns at Warsaw." After this ignominious treachery, the residue of our army were, of course, compelled to evacuate their positions and cross on the left bank of the Vistula; and the "victorious" Russians, on the 7th of September, 1831, entered the city. I did not see them in Warsaw, as I was on the left bank of the Vistula, with the army that first passed the bridges, but I was told that all their officers and soldiers entered it with green branches in their helmets, as emblems of this memorable victory! Sic transit gloria mundi!" Gen. Krukowiecki remained in Warsaw to rejoice with the Russians of the "victory" which he achieved with them and for them and our army, which left Warsaw 27,000 strong, but deprived of all necessaries and ammunition, retreated towards the fortress Modlin, situate about 150 English miles from Warsaw. The depressed spirit which this treachery created amongst our soldiers, want of all means, and the desire to spare the lives of our braves for a more auspicious time to recruit, equip and maintain the troops, induced our leaders to suspend farther efforts of the nation and military operations; and after a month's march, namely, on the 5th of October, the whole army which left Warsaw headed by General-in-chief Rybinski, entered Prussia. Shortly after, Gen. Romarino detached, as we have seen, from the garrison of Warsaw, entered Austria with a corps of about 20,000. Including the other small corps, guided by the same motives as the mainarmy, more than 60,000, armed and unarmed Poles, entered those two foreign countries, Austria and Prussia, with the intention to go to France, and await there for a suitable opportunity to renew the struggle for the independence of their country-which did also all the members of government, and all the members of both houses of the Diet-with the exception of a few who were overtaken by the Russians, and made prisoners of war. The privates and non-commissioned officers, were, however, forced by the Austrian and Prussian governments, and their re spective bayonets, to return to Poland, under pretext of a general amnesty, which the Czar Nicholas "most graciously" offered to them. They were, then, taken to the Russian army, and sent on the Caucasian line-many of them, succeeding in reaching Circassia, have become, there, military instructors, and are now teaching the Czar a new lesson, what a people, loving liberty and their native land, have power to do. So the officers of the army only, the members of Government, and members of the Diet, were allowed to go to France. Still, however, more than 9,000 Poles reached France, England, Switzerland, and Belgium-and some five or six thousand, under various characters, remained in various parts of Germany and Hungary; some are in Persia and Turkey, and a few in the United States, all acting for, and on behalf of, liberty and Poland, as apostles of the former, and a living protestation of the injustice done to the latter. They are, in other words, representatives and emissaries of the twentyfour millions of people actually living on the soil of dismembered Poland-longing for their independence, and ready to prove, once again, "that every thing they have, belongs to their country, and every thing their country has, belongs to free nations." The members of the Diet of these people, in three times the number required by the act vesting in them the power of legislating wherever they shall meet together, are waiting in France, Belgium, and England, for a suitable season of answering the purpose of their great mission. And it is no poetic fiction when I say, that all the sons of Poland are forging again their bolts of just vengeance; and the day is not far distant when the lightning, red with the wrath of accumulated wrongs, shall burst in seven-fold fury over the heads of their oppressors—and traitors. What they can accomplish, let the sample of 1830 answer. There is no other Krukowiecki amongst them; and Louis Philippe's new offers nor promises will not again be listened to. New-York, January 1, 1846. G. T. AMERICA IN 1846. THE PAST THE FUTURE. A NEW year opens, bringing, as is its wont, to individual man, thronging recollections that crowd upon his memory. The incidents of his by-gone years, losing their scattered character, are rapidly concentrated. The mind, as it dwells upon them, grasps as it were at once, and in their true bearing, the action of remote causes, before apparently unconnected, and sees, or thinks it sees, their now evident results. The future, too, grows out of the past. We foresee, as we believe, what that future should, and perhaps may produce. We anticipate the course we are probably to tread; and something more of unity and confidence of purpose is attained. Who has not felt this, as he passes through the portal of life from one year to another? Who that turns his thoughts from the individual to the mass-from the incidents that chequer or control the narrower sphere in which he moves, to those that attend upon the progress and destiny of that social system of which he is a part, does not look back, to embrace at one view the result of the institutions under which he lives does not look forward and foresee the effects which are yet to arise from them, on the interests and welfare of those whom they protect and control? Has not our own country reached, at length, that point, when we may justly make for ourselves this retrospect of the past and prospect for the future? Has not the period come when, dwelling less upon the scattered incidents, eventful and glorious as they have so often been, that mark our progress, we are chiefly impressed with and rejoice in the great result which their combined influence has successfully worked out? And how steadily, and rapidly, and gloriously has this been done? With indications how striking of the great purposes of providence, and the evident mission of our people! Scarcely three centuries have passed away, in the long revolution of six thousand years, since the vast and most favored region of the habitable globe was utterly unknown to civilization—almost to occupation. When, near the beginning of the sixteenth century, Columbus, not in search of a new world, or believing that one existed in the midst of an untraversed ocean, but pursuing his course towards populous India, known for thousands of years, suddenly came upon the islands of America; and the adventurous navigators, who quickly followed in his track, discovered its northern continent; they found a territory destitute almost of inhabitants, though teeming with every thing that could minister to the prosperity and augmentation of the human race. From the Mexican gulf and the cape of Florida, on the south, to the latitudes corresponding with Scotland, Stockholm and St. Petersburg, on the north-from the capacious harbors of the Atlantic, on one coast, to those of the Pacific on the other, extended a region whose surface, embracing six millions of square miles, was nearly twice as large as the whole of Europe, which supports two hundred and twenty millions of people; and more than doubled in extent the territories of China and of India, the dwelling-places of four hundred millions of mankind. In this, the fairest portion of the temperate zone, there might readily have lived, within the ascertained proportion of population as existing in the old world, five hundred millions of people. Nor was it from extent alone that it possessed wonderful capacity for population-weaderful opportunities for the developement of social existence. Not reaching, on the one hand, to the sultry suns of the tropics, nor piercing, on the other, into frozen and inhospitable wastes; the mountains, almost universally, of moderate elevation, and the plains not sinking, in general, to too low a level; its climate was salu- phy, had, at the fitting season, been brious to a degree not equalled in any supplanted by the teachings of inspired region of similar extent. A soil, rich as truth. The successive empires of Sethe narrow alluvion upon the borders sostris, of Alexander, of Rome and of of the Nile, was spread over the surface Charlemagne, had combined numerous of almost boundless prairies, fitted to nations beneath the sway, and given to nourish, in one part, the cereal grains them the advantages of a common govof hardier climes, in a luxurious profu- ernment; and been followed in their sion only to be equalled by the wonder- turn by the kingdoms of modern days ful growth in other parts, of cotton, and that have risen from their ruins. Arts, sugar, and tobacco, and rice, and the and letters, and refinement had been various products of warmer skies. For- borne by the Muses from the banks of ests with every variety of timber; min- the Ilissus to the shores of Tiber, and erals adapted to all the wants of so- thence to the Rhine, the Seine and ciety, and so scattered as most readily the Thames. The sails of commerce to minister to them; rivers so spread- had whitened the seas of India, and of ing their interminable arms as to bring Britain; the Mediterranean and the together and connect, by a common and Baltic. But not so was it, through the easy bond, districts the most remote; same long lapse of time, in the more harbors opening upon every sea, and genial climate and amid the richer reinviting to profitable commerce ;-by sources of the North American contisuch features was this vast territory nent. There, the few savage tenants stamped by primeval nature, making it of the wilderness lingered, in unimwithout a parallel on the surface of the proved barbarity, ignorant of written globe, in what is best calculated for the language; speaking in a vocabulary the social extension and welfare of the hu- coarsest and most ungrammatical; with man race. Yet from this region, by a nature made so attractive, was that race withheld. Some wandering tribes of Indians, not exceeding in their whole number the population of many a city in the old world, were, after the long lapse of nearly sixty centuries, the sole tenants of millions of miles, where hundreds of millions of human beings might have dwelt. Nor was it by restraint of population only, that the usual and probable course of nature and events seemed, in this favored region, to have been thus held back for the fulness of time. In the Old World, man, starting from the germ of his existence, had with increasing numbers, made progress in the development of his moral, as well as his physical attributes. Every form of social communion had come into being; language, civilization, government, religion, science, art, and commerce had, through successive centuries, and from the farthest East to the Atlantic limits of the continent, given evidence of the natural development of his powers and desires. From savage life, small communities had arisen, and swelled in turn into nations. The early forms of uncouth superstition, after giving place to the creations of more cultivated imagination, and even to the speculations of an unsatisfied philoso superstition so vague and transient that it scarcely amounted to the rudest form of religious belief; not possessing even the plough or the loom; not dwelling in houses; not using the commonest of the metals; not venturing to navigate, in their miserable canoes, the oceans which spread along their coasts; only making unskilfully a few clumsy weapons, absolutely needed for their ferocious warfare or the chase. Is it fanciful to think-nay, is it reasonable to doubt-that it was among those dispensations of Providence which so often have withheld, till the fitting season, the development of so much that has most deeply affected the social, the moral, the religious condition of mankind, that this glorious and abounding region was thus wonderfully reserved, with all its unequalled advantages unknown, and all its original brightness undiminished, to be brought to the uses of civilized and enlightened man, at an era and in a mode which were to disclose new principles, and diffuse new blessings in the onward progress of his race-magnus ab integro sæclorum nascitur ordo? In the Old World civilization had grown up from barbarism by slow degrees; habits had too often usurped the place of principles, and belief the place of reason; power, long established, had acquired reverence; what was local, or conventional, or traditional had come to be recognized as intrinsic truth; and around all the fabrics that civilization, and religion, and art, even with the sincerest aspirations for human well being, had erected, innumerable excrescences were of necessity entwined. In vain, could enlightened reason hope, amidst such things, to exercise untrammelled sway; if exercised, could less than centuries effectually change, in the scenes where they existed, and where so many interests were alive to protect and even to vindicate them, the habits, and prejudices, and belief, and power, and institutions which centuries had served to create and strengthen? For the New World beyond the ocean was this destiny reserved; thither might be borne the treasures that reason, long searching in the mine of social being, had separated from its dross; and there the spreading philanthropy, which eagerly aims at the widest diffusion of social welfare, might well hope to found, and build up from their foundations, institutions such as she could not elsewhere rear. And to whom was this glorious destiny assigned? The liberty of man, in the new world, was not to spring from the rude license of untamed barbarians; nor the restraint of government from the lessons of sweeping conquerors; nor the energy of industry, from the cravings of poverty and want; nor religion, from the fiery impulses of a persecuting spirit. No! liberty, and order, and industry, and religion, were to be planted by other hands and reared by other influences. Who brought them from the British islands? To Virginia-the associates of De la Ware, less distinguished by rank than virtue, of Southampton, the friend of Shakspeare, who, almost before a hut was thrown up to shelter them, hastened to write back to the friends they had left beyond the ocean, that they "doubted not God would raise their state, and build up his church in that excellent clime" to which they were come. To Maryland-the followers of the mild and liberal and enlightened Calvert, whose charge and solicitude to "protect them in their rights and liberties" was so early and constant, as to elicit from them the spontaneous "testimony of their gratitude," and the voluntary gift, for the public uses of the colony, of the largest subsidy their means could furnish. To Massachusetts-the noble band whose "very genius always led them to oppose," as the arbitrary Strafford angrily exclaimed, the domination of power, whether in church or state. To Rhode Island-the companions of Roger Williams, who established, as the fundamental principle of the social compact, that the will of the majority was supreme in the government of civil things, and the conscience was to be ruled by God alone. To Pennsylvania the people whom, as Cromwell declared, neither gifts, honors, offices, nor places could win; the spirits who, far in advance of their times, already held, with the illustrious founder of their new community, that general education should be provided for; that poverty, not dishonest, should never be punished by imprisonment, nor offences against property, by death; and who, in the land where feudal inequality was recognized as an indispensable condition of society, if not an actual benefit and blessing, publicly proclaimed that it was contrary "to the appointment of the Great Governor of the world," that "nineteen parts of the land should feed the appetites of the twentieth." To New-Jersey-the little band who had scarcely made their first settlement, when they published a solemn declaration, recognizing absolute freedom of religious opinion; the vote by ballot; universal suffrage; the unqualified duty of the representative to obey the instructions of the electors; the choice of justices by the people, and judges by the Assembly for limited terms; the trial by jury, to whom the judges were only to be assistants; no imprisonment for debt; the protection of the Indian; and the education of the orphan at the public expense. And who were they, that, from elsewhere than the British isles, sought with eager sails, in the solitudes beyond the ocean, the promises that their hearts yearned for, but could not find in old, and enlightened, and self-satised Europe? Who were they, that, with wives and children, came hastening from the cliffs of Switzerland, the vine-clad hills of France, the teeming valleys of the Rhine, the level plains of Holland, and even the bleak shores of the Baltic and the Northern Sea? Lowly, indeed, they might ofttimes have been in this world's eye, and poor in this world's goods; but they were men who, with few lights to illumine, and few guides to lead or strengthen the m-beneath the frowning turrets of lordly castles, and circled by the meshes of feudal customs, and surrounded by the all-pervading influences of a faith cemented by time and power, had yet felt and nursed in their hearts, the greatest of truths and rights, alike civil and religious; coveting to attain, and to enjoy them, and willing to sacrifice for them, if need be, home, and home's associations, and life itself. Children, were they, of those who, "on the Alpine mountains cold, kept pure the truth of God," and amid their fastnesses preserved, from surrounding and universal monarchy, the form and. substance of democracy-who, under the banners of Gustavus, broke through the ramparts of feudal despotism-who, in the bold teachings of Luther, Zuinglius, and Calvin, hailed the vindication of the rights of conscience-who, amid marshes and lowlands, successfully protected commercial freedom, and popular sovereignty, and religious liberty, against the banded power and chivalry of Spain, in her most powerful day-and whom the proudest of Bourbon kings could indeed drive from their homesteads and their workshops, but not from their devotion to liberty and their God. These were the men who were to found and form for themselves institutions of society and government, in a world where all the future was open to them, uncontrolled and untrammelled by a vestige of the past. That duty, not more for themselves, than the ages and people that were to follow them, these wandering and despised apostles of a truer social faith performed, with simple and fearless earnestness, in their wilderness beyond the ocean; while the power and genius of the civilized world, from which they came, were thinking as little of their doctrines and their actions, as the tenants of Roman palaces, and the teachers of Grecian schools, had thought, sixteen centuries before, of the divine lessons which Providence had selected the wandering fishermen and artizans of Palestine to proclaim. While men, whose names are still hardly rescued from oblivion, by grateful research, and are never blazoned on fame's escutcheon, were establishing as the very basis of their fellowship the principles and truths which intelligence, and reason, and wisdom, and Christian benevolence should alike have united to cherish and extend-how many spirits still foremost in the world's regard-"lights of the church and guardians of the laws"were enlisted to suppress, to pervert, or to destroy them! Bacon, brightest of his age and country in acknowledged genius, was seeking to uphold, against the feelings and efforts of the times, tribunals of justice in form and practice the most odious, or aiming to check the struggling principles of representative government, by influences secret, systematic and corrupt. Coke, chief minister and interpreter of the laws, was claiming for the monarch the right to dispense with them at his will. Laud, the head of a church founded in revolt against ecclesiastical intolerance, was engaged in ceaseless efforts to restore it in more than pristine vigour. Cromwell, raised to power and to lofty fame by vindicating a people's rights, was degrading his great trust into the stale offices of a military despot. Clarendon, who had started in the race of patriotism side by side with Hambden, was sacrificing the last remnants of his country's freedom and honor to the most worthless and profligate of her kings. In France, the faint but cheering lights of popular control in civil government and wise tolerance in religion, were crushed as they broke forth, by the proud feet of Richelieu, of Mazarin, and of Louis; and democracy was driven even from the citadel which she appeared to have secured, when Barnvelt perished on the scaffold, and Grotius was a wandering exile, and all the virtues of Dewitt failed to rescue him from his bloody fate. It seemed as if, in the Old World, the dark spirit of bygone ages could not be exorcised-that if the germ of social freedom and human right was planted it could not grow; or, if it grew, old weeds must choke it or storms uproot it there; and that they only "had chosen the good part that could not be taken from them," who, full of devotion and of faith in their glorious mission, sought in the New World the only true spot whereon to build institutions which were to spring |