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poo, on the contrary, all is bustle, brick and business. Every thing breathes of modern times, every body is occupied with the concerns of the present moment, excepting one elegant scholar, who unites a singular resemblance to the Roman face and dignified person of our Washington, with the magnificent spirit and intellectual accomplishments of his own Italian hero.

At every change in the landscape, you fall upon monuments of some new race of men, among the number that have in their turn inhabited these islands. The mysterious monument of Stonehenge, standing remote and alone upon a bare and boundless heath, as much unconnected with the events of past ages as it is with the uses of the present, carries you back, beyond all historical records, into the obscurity of a wholly unknown period. Perhaps the Druids raised it; but by what machinery could these half barbarians have wrought and moved such immense masses of rock? By what fatality is it, that, in every part of the globe, the most durable impressions that have been made upon its surface were the work of races now entirely extinct? Who were the builders of the pyramids, and the massy monuments of Egypt and India? Who constructed the Cyclopean walls of Italy and Greece, or elevated the innumerable and inexplicable mounds, which are seen in every part of Europe, Asia, and America; or the ancient forts upon the Ohio, on whose ruins the third growth of trees is now more than four hundred years old? All these constructions have existed through the whole period within the memory of man, and will continue, when all the architecture of the present generation, with its high civilization and improved machinery, shall have crumbled into dust. Stonehenge will remain unchanged, when the banks of the Thames shall be as bare as Salisbury heath. But the Romans had something of the spirit of these primitive builders, and they left every where distinct traces of their passage. Half the castles in Great Britain were founded, according to tradition, by Julius Cæsar; and abundant vestiges remain, throughout the island, of their walls, and forts, and military roads. Most of their castles have, however, been built upon and augmented at a later period, and belong, with more propriety, to the brilliant period of Gothic archi

tecture. Thus the keep of Warwick dates from the time of Cæsar, while the castle itself, with its lofty battlements, extensive walls, and large enclosures, bears witness to the age, when every Norman chief was a military despot within his own barony. To this period appertains the principal part of the magnificent Gothic monuments, castles, cathedrals, abbeys, priories and churches, in various stages of preservation and of ruin; some, like Warwick and Alnwick castles, like Salisbury cathedral and Westminster abbey, in all their original perfection; others, like Kenilworth and Canterbury, little more than a rude mass of earth and rubbish; and others again in the intermediate stages of decay, borrowing a sort of charm from their very ruin, and putting on their dark-green robes of ivy to conceal the ravages of time, as if the luxuriant bounty of nature were purposely throwing a veil over the frailty and feebleness of art. What a beautiful and brilliant vision was this Gothic architecture, shining out as it did from the deepest darkness of feudal barbarism! And here again, by what fatality has it happened that the moderns, with all their civilization and improved taste, have been as utterly unsuccessful in rivalling the divine simplicity of the Greeks, as the rude grandeur of the Cyclopeans and ancient Egyptians? Since the revival of art in Europe, the builders have confined themselves wholly to a graceless and unsuccessful imitation of ancient nodels. Strange, that the only new architectural concep tion of any value, subsequent to the time of Phidias, should have been struck out at the worst period of society that has since occurred! Sometimes the moderns, in their laborious poverty of invention, heap up small materials in large masses, and think that St. Peter's or St. Paul's will be as much more sublime than the Parthenon, as they are larger; at others, they condescend to a servile imitation of the wild and native graces of the Gothic; as the Chinese, in their stupid ignorance of perspective, can still copy, line by line, and point by point, an European picture. But the Norman castles and churches, with all their richness and sublimity, fell with the power of their owners at the rise of the commonwealth. The Independents were levellers of substance as well as form; and the material traces they left of their existence are the ruins of what their predeces

sors had built. They, too, had an architecture, but it was not in wood nor stone. It was enough for them to lay the foundation of the nobler fabric of civil liberty. The effects of the only change in society that has since occurred, are seen in the cultivated fields, the populous and thriving cities, the busy ports, and the general prosperous appearance of the country.

All the various aspects, that I have mentioned, present themselves in turns; and, having gradually succeeded to each other, their contrasts are never too rude, and they harmonize together so as to make up a most agreeable picture. Sometimes, as at Edinburgh, the creations of ancient and of modern days, the old and new towns, have placed themselves very amicably side by side, like Fitz James and Rhoderic Dhu reposing on the same plaid; while at London, the general emporium and central point of the whole system, every variety of origin and social existence is defaced, and all are coagulated in one uniform though heterogeneous mass.

Features of American Scenery.—TUDOR.

THE numerous waterfalls, the enchanting beauty of Lake George and its pellucid flood, of Lake Champlain and the lesser lakes, afford many objects of the most picturesque character; while the inland seas, from Superior to Ontario, and that astounding cataract, whose roar would hardly be increased by the united murmurs of all the cascades of Europe, are calculated to inspire vast and sublime conceptions. The effects, too, of our climate, composed of a Siberian winter and an Italian summer, furnish new and peculiar objects for description. The circumstances of remote regions are here blended, and strikingly opposite appearances witnessed in the same spot at different seasons of the year. In our winters, we have the sun at the same altitude as in Italy, shining on an unlimited surface of snow, which can only be found in the higher latitudes of Europe, where the sun in the winter rises little above the horizon. The dazzling brilliance of a winter's day and a moonlight

night, in an atmosphere astonishingly clear and frosty, when the utmost splendour of the sky is reflected from a surface of spotless white, attended with the most excessive cold, is peculiar to the northern part of the United States. What, too, can surpass the celestial purity and transparency of the atmosphere in a fine autumnal day, when our vision and our thought seem carried to the third heaven; the gorgeous magnificence of the close, when the sun sinks from our view, surrounded with various masses of clouds fringed with gold and purple, and reflecting, in evanescent tints, all the hues of the rainbow!

Literary Character of Jefferson and Adams.—
WEBSTER.

THE last public labour of Mr. Jefferson naturally suggests the expression of the high praise which is due, both to him and to Mr. Adams, for their uniform and zealous attachment to learning, and to the cause of general knowledge. Of the advantages of learning, indeed, and of literary accomplishments, their own characters were striking recommendations and illustrations. They were scholars, ripe and good scholars; widely acquainted with ancient as well as modern literature, and not altogether uninstructed in the deeper sciences. Their acquirements doubtless were different, and so were the particular objects of their literary pursuits; as their tastes and characters in these respects differed like those of other men. Being also men of busy lives, with great objects requiring action constantly before them, their attainments in letters did not become showy or obtrusive. Yet I would hazard the opinion, that, if we could now ascertain all the causes which gave them eminence and distinction in the midst of the great men with whom they acted, we should find not among the least their early acquisition in literature, the resources which it furnished, the promptitude and facility which it communicated, and the wide field it opened for analogy and illustration; giving them thus, on every subject, a larger

view and a broader range, as well for discussion as for the government of their own conduct.

Literature sometimes, and pretensions to it much oftener, disgusts, by appearing to hang loosely on the character, like something foreign or extraneous; not a part, but an ill-ad-· justed appendage; or by seeming to overload and weigh it down by its unsightly bulk, like the productions of bad taste in architecture, when there is massy and cumbrous ornament, without strength or solidity of column. This has exposed learning, and especially classical learning, to reproach. Men have seen that it might exist without mental superiority, without vigour, without good taste, and without utility. But, in such cases, classical learning has only not inspired natural talent; or, at most, it has but made original feebleness of intellect and natural bluntness of perception somewhat more conspicuous. The question, after all, if it be a question, is, whether literature, ancient as well as modern, does not assist a good understanding, improve natural good taste, add polished armour to native strength, and render its possessor not only more capable of deriving private happiness from contemplation and reflection, but more accomplished also for action in the affairs of life, and especially for public action. Those, whose memories we now honour, were learned men; but their learning was kept in its proper place, and made subservient to the uses and objects of life. They were scholars, not common nor superficial; but their scholarship was so in keeping with their character, so blended and inwrought, that careless observers or bad judges, not seeing an ostentatious display of it, might infer that it did not exist; forgetting, or not knowing, that classical learning, in men who act in conspicuous public stations, perform duties which exercise the faculty of writing, or address popular, judicial, or deliberative bodies, is often felt where it is little seen, and sometimes felt more effectually because it is not seen at all.

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