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is considerable, too great indeed for the business they are employed in; for the consumption of goods in every country has its limits; the faculties of the people, that is, their ability to buy and pay, being equal only to a certain quantity of merchandize. If merchants calculate amiss on this proportion, and import too much, they will of course find the sale dull for the overplus, and some of them will say, that trade languishes. They should, and doubtless will, grow wiser by experience, and import less. If too many artificers in town, and farmers from the country, flattering themselves with the idea of leading easier lives, turn shopkeepers, the whole natural quantity of that business divided among them all may afford too small a share for each, and occasion complaints, that trading is dead; these may also suppose, that it is owing to scarcity of money, while, in fact, it is not so much from the fewness of buyers, as from the excessive number of sellers, that the mischief arises; and, if every shopkeeping farmer and mechanic would return to the use of his plough and working tools, there would remain of widows and other women, shopkeepers sufficient for the business, which might then afford them a comfortable main

tenance.

public good; the differences are only about the various modes of promoting it. Things, actions, measures, and objects of all kinds, present themselves to the minds of men in such a variety of lights, that it is not possible we should all think alike at the same time on every subject, when hardly the same man retains at all times the same ideas of it. Parties are therefore the common lot of humanity; and ours are by no means more mischievous or less beneficial than those of other countries, nations, and ages, enjoying in the same degree the great blessing of political liberty.

Some indeed among us are not so much grieved for the present state of our affairs, as apprehensive for the future. The growth of luxury alarms them, and they think we are from that alone in the high road to ruin. They observe, that no revenue is sufficient without economy, and that the most plentiful income of a whole people from the natural productions of their country may be dissipated in vain and needless expences, and poverty be introduced in the place of affluence. This may be possible. It however rarely happens: for there seems to be in every nation a greater proportion of industry and frugality, which tend to enrich, than of idleness and prodigality, which ocWhoever has travelled through the va- casion poverty: so that upon the whole rious parts of Europe, and observed how there is a continual accumulation. Reflect small is the proportion of people in affluence what Spain, Gaul, Germany, and Britain or easy circumstances there, compared with were in the time of the Romans, inhabited those in poverty and misery; the few rich by people little richer than our savages, and and haughty landlords, the multitude of poor, consider the wealth they at present possess, abject, rack-rented, tythe-paying tenants, and in numerous wellbuilt cities, improved farms, half-paid and half-starved ragged labourers; rich moveables, magazines stocked with valuand views here the happy mediocrity, that able manufactures, to say nothing of plate, so generally pervails throughout these states, jewels, and coined money; and all this, notwhere the cultivator works for himself, and withstanding their bad, wasteful, plundering supports his family in decent plenty, will, governments, and their mad destructive methinks, see abundant reason to bless Di-wars; and yet luxury and extravagant living vine Providence for the evident and great has never suffered much restraint in those difference in our favour, and be convinced that no nation known to us enjoys a greater share of human felicity.

It is true, that in some of the states there are parties and discords; but let us look back, and ask if we were ever without them? Such will exist wherever there is liberty; and perhaps they help to preserve it. By the collision of different sentiments, sparks of truth are struck out, and political light is obtained. The different factions, which at present divide us, aim all at the

countries.

Then consider the great proportion of industrious frugal farmers inhabiting the interior parts of these American states, and of whom the body of our nation consists, and judge whether it is possible, that the luxury of our seaports can be sufficient to ruin such a country. - If the importation of foreign luxuries could ruin a people, we should probably have been ruined long ago; for the British nation claimed a right, and practised it, of importing among us not only the superfluities of their own

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production, but those of every nation under | States are the great sources of our increas

heaven; we bought and consumed them, and yet we flourished and grew rich. At present our independent governments may do what we could not then do, discourage by heavy duties, or prevent by heavy prohibitions, such importations, and thereby grow richer: if, indeed, which may admit of dispute, the desire of adorning ourselves with fine clothes, possessing fine furniture, with elegant houses, etc. is not by strongly inciting to labour and industry, the occasion of producing a greater value, than is consumed in the gratification of that desire.

ing wealth. He that puts a seed into the earth is recompensed, perhaps, by receiving forty out of it: and he who draws a fish out of our water, draws up a piece of silver.

Let us (and there is no doubt but we shall) be attentive to these, and then the power of rivals, with all their restraining and prohibiting acts, cannot much hurt us. We are sons of the earth and seas, and, like Antæus in the fable, if, in wrestling with a Heracles, we now and then receive a fall, the touch of our parents will communicate to us fresh strength and vigour to

The agriculture and fisheries of the United renew the contest.

WILLIAM ELLERY CHANNING.

Born 1780. Died 1842.

MILTON'S INTELLECTUAL POWERS.

and beauty from the rude materials which other minds had collected. Milton had that universality which marks the highest order IN speaking of the intellectual qualities of intellect. Though accustomed (almost of Milton, we may begin with observing, from infancy) to drink at the fountains of that the very splendour of his poetic fame classical literature, he had nothing of the has tended to obscure or conceal the extent pedantry and fastidiousness which disdain of his mind, and the variety of its energies all other draughts. His healthy mind deand attainments. To many he seems only lighted in genius, on whatever soil or in a poet, when in truth he was a profound whatever age it burst forth and poured out scholar, a man of vast compass of thought, its fulness. He understood too well the imbued thoroughly with all ancient and mo- rights and dignity, and pride of creative dern learning, and able to master, to mould, imagination, to lay on it the laws of the to impregnate with his own intellectual pow- Greek or Roman school. Parnassus was er, his great and various acquisitions. He not to him the only holy ground of genius. had not learned the superficial doctrine of a He felt that poetry was as a universal prelater day, that poetry flourishes most in sence. Great minds were everywhere his an uncultivated soil, and that imagination kindred. He felt the enchantment of Oriental shapes its brightest visions from the mists fiction, surrendered himself to the strange of a superstitious age; and he had no dread creations of „Araby the Blest," and delighted of accumulating knowledge, lest it should still more in the romantic spirit of chivalry, oppress and smother his genius. He was and in the tales of wonder in which it was conscious of that within him which could embodied. Accordingly his poetry reminds quicken all knowledge, and wield it with us of the ocean, which adds to its own ease and might; which could give freshness boundlessness contributions from all regions to old truths, and harmony to discordant under heaven. Nor was it only in the dethoughts; which could bind together (by partment of imagination that his acquisitions living ties and mysterious affinities) the most were vast. He travelled over the whole remote discoveries; and rear fabrics of glory field of knowledge, (as far as it had then

been explored). His various philological ciples of his whole future being are now attainments were used to put him in pos- wrapped up in his soul, (as the rudiments session of the wisdom stored in all countries of the future plant in the seed.) As a newhere the intellect had been cultivated. The cessary result of this constitution, the soul natural philosophy, metaphysics, ethics, (possessed and moved by these mighty history, theology, and political science of though infant energies) is perpetually stretchhis own and former times, were familiar to ing beyond what is present and visible, him. Never was there a more unconfined struggling against the bounds of its earthly mind, and we could cite Milton as a practi- prison-house, and seeking relief and joy in cal example of the benefits of that universal imaginings of unseen and ideal being. This culture of intellect, which forms one dis- view of our nature (which has never been tinction of our times, but which some dread fully developed, and which goes further as unfriendly to original thought. Let such towards explaining the contradictions of remember, that MIND is in its own nature human life than all others) carries us to diffusive. Its object is the universe, which the very foundation and sources of poetry. is strictly one, (or bound together by infinite He who cannot interpret (by his own conconnections and correspondencies); and ac- sciousness) what we have now said, wants cordingly its natural progress is from one the true key to works of genius. He has to another field of thought; and wherever not penetrated those sacred recesses of the original power (creative genius) exists, the soul, where poetry is born and nourished, mind (far from being distracted or oppressed and inhales immortal vigour, and wings herby the variety of its acquisitions) will see self for her heavenward flight. In an intelmore and more common bearings and hid- lectual nature, (framed for progress and for den and beautiful analogies in all the objects higher modes of being,) there must be creaof knowledge will see mutual light shed tive energies, powers of original and everfrom truth to truth, and will compel us growing thought; and poetry is the form in (with a kingly power, whatever it under which these energies are chiefly manifested. stands,) to yield some tribute of proof, or It is the glorious prerogative of this art, illustration, or splendour, to whatever topic that it makes all things new," for the grait would unfold. tification of a divine instinct. It indeed. finds its elements in what it actually sees and experiences, (in the worlds of matter and mind:) but it combines and blends these into new forms and according to new affinities; breaks down (if we may so say) the distinctions and bounds of nature; imparts to material objects life, and sentiment, and emotion, and invests the mind with the powers and splendours of the outward creation; describes the surrounding universe in the colours which the passions throw over it, and depicts the mind in those modes of repose or agitation, of tenderness or sublime emotion, which manifests its thirst for a more powerful and joyful existence. To a man of a literal and prosaic character, the mind may seem lawless in these workings; but it observes higher laws than it transgresses, (the laws of the immortal intellect ;) it is trying and developing its best faculties; and in the objects which it describes, or in the emotions which it awakens, anticipates those states of progressive power, splendour, beauty and happiness, for which it was created.

ESTIMATE OF POETRY.

Or all God's gifts of intellect, Milton esteemed poetical genius the most transcendent. He esteemed it in himself as a kind of inspiration, and wrote his great works with something of the conscious dignity of a prophet. We agree with Milton in his estimate of poetry. It seems to us the divinest of all arts, for it is the breathing or expression of that principle or sentiment, which is deepest and sublimest in human nature; we mean of that thirst or aspiration, to which no mind is wholly a stranger, for something purer and lovelier, something more powerful, lofty, and thrilling, than ordinary and real life affords. No doctrine is more common among Christians than that of man's immortality, but it is not so generally understood, that the germs or prin

We accordingly believe that poetry (far

from injuring society) is one of the great

instruments of its refinement and exaltation. OBJECTIONS TO POETRY COMBATED.

It lifts the mind above ordinary life, gives it a respite from pressing cares, and awakens the consciousness of its affinity with what is pure and noble. In its legitimate and highest efforts, it has the same tendency and aim with Christianity; that is, to spiritualize our nature. True; poetry has been made the instrument of vice, the pander of bad passions; but when genius thus stoops, it dims its fires, and parts with much of its power; and even when poetry is enslaved to licentiousness or misanthropy, she cannot wholly forget her true vocation. Strains of pure feeling, touches of tenderness, images of innocent happiness, sympathies with suffering virtue, bursts of scorn or indignation at the hollowness of the world, passages true to our moral nature, often escape in an immoral work, and show us how hard it is for a gifted spirit to divorce itself wholly from what is good. Poetry has a natural alliance with our best affections. It delights in the beauty and sublimity of the outward creation and of the soul. It indeed portrays (with terrible energy) the excesses of the passions; but they are passions which show a mighty nature, which are full of power, which command awe, and excite a deep though shuddering sympathy. Its great tendency and purpose, is, to carry the mind beyond and above the beaten, dusty, weary walks of ordinary life; to lift it into a purer element, and to breathe into it more profound and generous emotion. It reveals to us the loveliness of nature, brings back the freshness of youthful feeling, revives the relish of simple pleasures, keeps unquenched the enthusiasm which warmed the springtime of our being, refines youthful love, strengthens our interest in human nature by vivid delineations of its tenderest and loftiest feelings, spreads our sympathies over all classes of society, knits us (by new ties) with universal being, and (through the brightness of its prophetic visions) helps faith to lay hold on the future life.

WE are aware, that it is objected to poetry, that it gives wrong views and excites false expectations of life, peoples the mind with shadows and illusions, and builds up imaginations on the ruins of wisdom. That there is a wisdom, against which poetry wars, (the wisdom of the senses, which makes physical comfort and gratification the supreme good, and wealth the chief interest of life) we do not deny; nor do we deem it the least service which poetry renders to mankind, that it redeems them from the thraldom of this earth-born prudence. But, passing over this topic, we would observe, that the complaint against poetry, (as abounding in illusion and deception) is in the main groundless. In many poems there is more of truth than in many histories and philosophic theories. The fictions of genius are often the vehicles of the sublimest verities, and its flashes often open new regions of thought, and throw new light on the mysteries of our being. In poetry the letter is falsehood, but the spirit is often profoundest wisdom. And if truth thus dwells in the boldest fictions of the poet, much more may it be expected in his delineations of life; for the present life (which is the first stage of the immortal mind) abounds in the materials of poetry, and it is the high office of the bard to detect this divine element among the grosser labours and pleasures of our earthly being. The present life is not wholly prosaic, precise, tame, and finite. To the gifted eye it abounds in the poetic. The affections which spread beyond ourselves and stretch far into futurity; the workings of mighty passions, which seem to arm the soul with an almost superhuman energy; the innocent and irrepressible joy of infancy, the bloom, and buoyancy, and dazzling hopes of youth; the throbbings of the heart, when it first wakes to love, and dreams of a happiness too vast for earth; woman with her beauty, and grace, and gentleness, and fulness of feeling, and depth of affection, and her blushes of purity, and the tones and looks which only a mother's heart can inspire; these are all poetical. It is not true that the poet paints a life which does not exist. He only extracts and concentrates (as it were) life's ethereal essence, ar

rests and condenses its volatile fragrance, brings together its scattered beauties, and prolongs its more refined but evanescent joys; and in this he does well; for it is good to feel that life is not wholly usurped by cares for subsistence, and physical gratifications, but admits (in measures which may be indefinitely enlarged) sentiments and delights worthy of a higher being. This power of poetry to refine our views of life and happiness is more and more needed as society advances. It is needed to withstand the encroachments of heartless and artificial manners which make civilization so tame and uninteresting. It is needed to counter

act the tendency of physical science, which (being now sought, not as formerly for intellectual gratification, but for multiplying bodily comforts,) requires a new development of imaginations, taste, and poetry, to preserve men from sinking into an earthly, material, epicurean -life. Our remarks in vindication of poetry have extended beyond our original design. They have had a higher aim than to assert the dignity of Milton as a poet, and that is, to endear and recommend this divine art to all who reverence and would cultivate and refine their nature.

JOHN JAMES AUDUBON. Born 1782.

THE TURTLERS.

ABOUT eight miles from the Tortugas, a group of islands lying in the gulf of Florida, is a great coral reef or wall, on which many an ignorant or careless navigator has suffered shipwreck. The whole ground around them is densely covered with corals, seafans, and other productions of the deep, amid which crawl innumerable testaceous animals, while shoals of curious and beautiful fishes fill the limpid waters above them. Turtles of different species resort to these banks, to deposit their eggs in the burning sand, and clouds of sea-fowl arrive every spring for the same purpose. These are followed by persons called „Eggers", who, when their cargoes are completed, sail to distant markets, to exchange their eggs for a portion of that gold, on the acquisition of which all men seem bent.

But the Tortugas are not the only breeding places of the turtles; these animals, on the contrary, frequent many other keys, as well as various parts of the coast of the mainland. There are four different species, which are known by the names of the green turtle, the hawk-billed turtle, the loggerhead turtle, and the trunk turtle. The first is

considered the best as an article of food, in which capacity it is well known' to most epicures. It approaches the shores, and enters the bays, inlets, and rivers, early in the month of April, after having spent the winter in the deep waters. It deposits its eggs in convenient places, at two different times of May, and once again in June. The first deposit is the largest, and the last the least, the total quantity being at an average about two hundred and forty. The hawk-billed turtle, whose shell is so valuable as an article of commerce, being used for various purposes in the arts, is the next with respect to the quality of its flesh. It resorts to the outer keys only, where it deposits its eggs in two sets, first in July, and again in August, although it crawls the beaches of these keys much earlier in the season, as if to look for a safe place. The loggerhead visits the Tortugas in April, and lays from that period until late in June three sets of eggs, each set averaging a hundred and seventy. The trunk turtle, which is sometimes of an enormous size, and which has a pouch like a pelican, reaches the shores latest. The shell and flesh are so soft that one may push his finger into them, almost as into a lump of butter. This species is therefore considered as the

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