From oozy bed and watery cave,

The tenants of the lake who drew.
Thy voice of love the mystery knew,
Which makes old bards and prophets true.
"They tell us of that better day,

When love shall rule the world again;
When crime and fraud shall pass away,

And beast and bird shall dwell with men ;
When seas shall marry with the land,
And fishes kiss a maiden's hand.

"The iron age has done its best

With trump and sword and warriors slain;
But could not tame the eagle's nest
Nor lead the lion by the mane;
With all its strength and all its woe,
There was an art it did not know.

"'T was fitting that a maid like thee,

In childhood's bright and happy hour,
Should teach the world the mystery

That innocence alone has power;

That love the victory can gain,

Which is not won by millions slain.

"O man! if thou wouldst know the art
The shattered world to reinstate,

Like her put on a loving heart,

And throw away thy guile and hate.
A maid shall tell thee how 't is done,

A child shall show the victory won.".

- pp. 398, 399.

We have by no means done justice, in our brief notice, to a book of which we can only add, that, while as a devotional work it is a worthy companion of the author's "Interior Life," it presents an array of literary resources and imaginative power, which, had it no higher claims, would make it one of the choicest books of the day. We have taken it in hand, not so much for the sake of reviewing it, as to show the author into how great an error his modesty led him, when he wrote concerning these "Letters ":" I cannot at present persuade myself that they would be likely to possess any special interest beyond a very limited circle."

ART. IX. Scenery and Philosophy in Europe. Being Fragments from the Portfolio of HORACE BINNEY WALLACE, Esquire, of Philadelphia. Philadelphia: Herman Hooker. 1855.

WE hear so much, in President's messages, speeches in Congress, and Fourth of July orations, about our "unexampled progress," our "wonderful prosperity," and the "success of our free institutions," that these topics have become trite and tiresome, and are regarded as the peculiar property of professional patriots and orators of the stump. Our advancement is as yet chiefly material and industrial, and therefore so much is said about it, for it is the only kind that the multitude can understand and value. Were it more intellectual and moral, the mental superiority which such progress implies, by revealing a higher standard for effort, would shame and prevent all this boasting. High culture and elevated virtue are always humble, because their gaze is fixed on the difficult and the unattained, and imagination and desire far outrun performance. Therefore it is written, "Let another praise thee, and not thine own mouth; a stranger, and not thine own lips."

Nevertheless the victories of industry have their epic aspect, and America as she now stands is a striking fact. The Western clearings, the immense farms of the Mississippi Valley, the Lake trade, the foreign immigration, toiling Africa chained to the car of Commerce, gorgeous and reckless New York, and sudden San Francisco, excite the imagination by all that they imply and foreshadow. They represent many ideas, and embody many a wonderful and moving story; for business has its danger and daring, its suffering and endurance, and the changes of fortune in this new world of boundless resources and free activity are more marvellous than the tales of the Arabian Nights. This bold enterprise that stretches to the Pacific, this skilled and thoughtful race grasping a vast empire like a homestead to cultivate and plant and adorn, this brave army of workers marching on irresistibly to the conquest of nature, form a grand spectacle. Though their weapons

the axe, the plough, and the steam-engine- have not the lustre of poetry that gleams from the point of the sword, though the heroes of the farm, the workshop, and the counting-house, like village Hampdens, die unsung, yet great qualities are often exhibited in these humble fields of man's effort, and their labors found nations, as those of the coral insect lift the basis of an island above the sea, to the light and air of heaven.

But the picture has its dark side. The eager desire for wealth, the "incessant and Sabbathless" pursuit of it, has become the universal passion and occupation. We have that love of money which is the root of all evil, and under the deadly shade of the tree from that root, the love of knowledge and art, of truth and virtue and beauty, withers and dies. "In prosperity no altars smoke." The curse of Midas is upon us. Our feelings, our ideas, our aspirations, are all turned into gold, and we are starving amid our barren abundance. We worship the material, not the spiritual, the visible and transient, not the invisible and eternal. We are practical, not intellectual, and our pleasures are of the senses, not of the reason, imagination, and taste. We are smitten with "the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eye, and the pride of life." We are true disciples of the ethics of interest and utility, and our only morality is cash payment. Truly has it been said, that "he who maketh haste to be rich shall not be innocent." If intemperate drinking be the degrading vice of one portion of our people, intemperate money-making is the besetting sin of another and much larger portion, and it is difficult to say which is the more pernicious. One is a vice of the senses destroying the mind; the other, a delusion of the mind, and a selfish passion blasting the moral sentiments and palsying the higher powers of the intellect. The poor drunkard cannot resist the "baneful cup," which benumbs his soul, "unmoulding reason's mintage," and transforming him

"Into the inglorious likeness of a beast";

and the infatuated worshipper of Mammon deliberately uses his mental faculties for his own destruction, prefers the ignoble and low to the pure and high, and shuts out the light of

heaven from his life. Successful industry, rapid gains, rank prosperity, without counteracting causes to modify their influence, have stimulated this passion for wealth to excess, and have produced already in this new country luxury, venality, corruption, contempt for intellectual pursuits and pleasures, and sneering indifference to ennobling and elevated sentiment. Hence the vulgar ostentation of our cities; hence the general want of literary taste and culture; hence the deplorable frauds of business; hence much of the baseness of our politics. Beautiful indeed are the results of industry, of financial enterprise and mechanical skill, of peace,

"Dear nurse of arts, plenties, and joyful births";

the steamer, the railroad, the rich and busy city, the cultivated farm, the luxurious and decorated home. But these are material things only, and their chief beauty is in their meaning and expression. If they represent, not virtue and knowledge, cultivated mind and refined taste, but selfishness and worldliness and ignorance, gross feelings and sordid passions, we turn from their splendor to find sentiment and emotion in some scene poor and bare in the outward things which defile not, but rich in thought and feeling,— in some humble home of poet or thinker or artist illumined by genius; some bleak Plymouth rock sanctified by enthusiasm and courage; the muddy trenches and death-strewn fields of some Inkerman or Alma, where wounds and dirt, hunger and tattered garments, are made beautiful by valor and sacrifice. Sweet are the uses of adversity when it develops intellectual power and heroic sentiment. A truth discovered bears not flowers and fruit only, but seed that connects it with all the future; "a thing of beauty is a joy for ever," and noble deeds are perpetual sermons and exhortations. Poverty and hardship, wounds and death, are shadowy and unreal, and quickly vanish, and then

"The glory dies not, and the pain is past."

Similar to the moral are the intellectual influences of this general desire for immediate, practical, tangible results, this passion for physical well-being, - by which we are distinguished. We bow down to the idols of the market, and cul

tivate the understanding which deals with the operative and instrumental, with the application of means to ends, rather than the reason whose province is virtue, truth, and beauty. As Lord Bacon says, ours is "the judgment of Æsop's cock, that preferred the barley-corn to the gem; of Midas, that, being chosen judge between Apollo, president of the Muses, and Pan, god of flocks, judged for plenty." We reverse the celestial hierarchy, in which "the angels of knowledge and illumination are placed before the angels of office and domination," worshipping, not the Seraphim, which are angels of love, nor the Cherubim, which are angels of light, but the inferior spirits, "which are angels of power and ministry." Too generally the sole end and purpose of our education is "lucre and profession," thus making of knowledge, not

"The wing wherewith we fly to heaven,"

but a "shop for profit and sale." Practical ability, talents for action and affairs, are alone generally appreciated and honored, and physical science is more highly valued than literature, philosophy, or art. Even in physical science we prefer the practical to the theoretical, the application of secondary causes to the study of general truths. We work in the "furnace, not in the mine," of natural philosophy, and seek the production of effects rather than the identification of laws. We study arts rather than sciences, and are thus distinguished for inventions, especially those which shorten labor and increase wealth, rather than for discoveries of new truth. We have able engineers and artisans, but few thinkers who devote their lives to the search of abstract principles to enlarge the domain of knowledge and "conquer the obscurity of nature." Therefore De Tocqueville said, "The Americans, who have not discovered one of the general laws of mechanics, have introduced into navigation an engine which changes the aspect of the world." We are thus in danger of arriving at the stagnant civilization of the Chinese, who have arts, but no sciences, because principles have been forgotten and processes alone are remembered.

If such be the spirit in which physical science is pursued, it follows that mental and moral philosophy and art have few