The Professor, by CURRER BELL. (Published | covery of the continent to the present time. Withby Harper and Brothers.) In Mrs. Gaskell's admirable memoirs of Charlotte Brontë, an interesting account is given of the composition of a novel, for which she in vain endeavored to obtain a publisher, before the name under which she wrote had been made popular by the success of "Jane Eyre" and "Shirley." The work, which is now presented to the world in a posthumous form, betrays the peculiar genius of its gifted author, although it has not so high-wrought a plot, nor such intensity of conception, nor such effective development of passion, as the remarkable productions which have placed the name of Currer Bell so high among English writers of fiction. The incidents of the story are drawn from Charlotte Brontë's residence at a Brussels school, and in the character of the heroine may be traced many lineaments suggested by the experience of the author. She is a young Swiss girl, in humble but respectable life, who becomes acquainted with the Professor in the pensionnat of a fashionable teacher in Brussels. Of a pure, unworldly nature-earning their daily bread by daily toil-with no taste for the pretensions and falsities of social life-and taught by the hard and bitter lessons of experience to sacrifice the idols of fancy to the worship of truth-these two unique personages are soon drawn into relations of unacknowledged sympathy with each other, and the ripening of this sentiment into a more exquisite passion forms the subject-matter of the story. The prominent characters in the scene are brought into contrast with an unprincipled, conceited, and shallow Frenchman, and an intriguing, profligate woman of the same nation, who conceals the leprous spots of her nature beneath a shining vail of decorum and gentleness. A sturdy English humorist plays an important part in the drama, although he is managed with less skill than the leading personages. The plot is singularly inartificial, has no mystery to act on the imagination of the reader, and is too transparent in its final issue to pique his curiosity. But the vivid and exact delineations of real life, and the natural conceptions of character which abound in the work, amply redeem this deficiency. As a preliminary study for the composition of "Jane Eyre" and "Villette," it is full of interest, and in itself it possesses attractions to the lover of acute psychological analysis far superior to the majority of English novels. Virginia Illustrated, by PORTE CRAYON. (Published by Harper and Brothers.) The graphic letter-press descriptions of Old Dominion scenery and manners in this volume are almost eclipsed by the admirable pictorial illustrations which are profusely scattered over its pages. Without its inexhaustible store of comic representations the narrative would be eminently readable for its quaint and good-humored confidences. The combined influence of pen and pencil make it one of the most fascinating books recently published, as our readers will agree who have already had a foretaste of its charms in these columns. out aiming at a profound philosophical exposition of the causes of American progress, or at the construction of an eloquent or picturesque narrative, he has attempted to supply the family and the library with a volume suited for convenient reference, and faithfully recording the successive steps in the development and operation of republican institutions in this country. The author possesses some unusual qualifications for the successful accomplishment of such a task. He has visited in person the principal scenes of our revolutionary history. He has made the acquaintance of many of the surviving patriarchs of the olden time, and listened to the traditions of the past from their own lips. Combined with this invaluable source of historical information, his researches among written and printed authorities of a trustworthy character have given him the command of an ample fund of materials for the preparation of his work. With the eye and judgment of an artist, Mr. Lossing excels in the lucid description of localities. Few writers possess such an enviable power of giving clear conceptions of the circumstances in which the events of history took place. His own interest in the subject greatly enhances the effect of his delineations. His patriotic sympathies are always alive. His glow of feeling at the recollection of a noble sentiment or a brave action gives fresh energy to his style. Hence he writes like a man more intent on doing justice to his theme than on making a book. The arrangement of the present volume has some peculiar features which increase the facility of consultation. It is divided into six periods, the first exhibiting a view of the aborigines who occupied the soil on the arrival of the Europeans; the second recording the various discoveries prior to the permanent settlements by individuals and governments; the third devoted to an account of the earliest settlements before the organization of the colonies; the fourth describing the colonial history; the fifth relating the story of the Revolution; and the sixth giving the annals of the republic. The various events narrated in the volume are connected by a thorough system of foot-notes, which enable the reader to group the topics that are related to each other into a comprehensive whole. Almost every page is pictured with some appropriate embellishment, illustrative of the events and individuals alluded to in the text. Mr. Lossing will add to his well-earned reputation as a writer on American history by the publication of this volume. It is in no sense a reproduction of the elaborate works of his predecessors in the same department-nor a substitute for them—but it fills a place of its own. As Washington Irving has remarked of the author's "Pictorial Field-Book," "It is calculated to make its way into every American family, and to be kept at hand for constant thumbing by young and old." Tent-Life in the Holy Land, by WILLIAM C. PRIME. (Published by Harper and Brothers.) A glow of religious and antiquarian enthusiasm gives A History of the United States, by BENSON J. vitality to Mr. Prime's descriptions of the vestiges LOSSING. (Published by Mason Brothers.) The of sacred history in Palestine. He is not one of design of Mr. Lossing in the compilation of this those cold-blooded travelers who can visit the history is to present an accurate narrative of Amer-scenes consecrated by the traditions of ages withican affairs in a form adapted for popular use. It out a thrill of emotion; nor is he careful to conceal embraces the whole course of events from the dis- the indulgence of his feelings from the sympathy of ness. his readers. With manly but unusual frankness, he makes them the confidants not only of his experience, but of its effects on himself. He traverses the Holy Land less as a geographer and a critic than as a man of strong poetical impulses, if not a poet. Every thing which he sees is invested with the radiance of pious associations. He has no wish to dissolve any pleasing illusions of time or place by the exercise of rude and bold inquiries. Contrary to the procedure of many recent tourists in the East, he listens with a kindly welcome to the legends of the past, and is reluctant to disturb the dust of centuries by the curious suggestions of doubt; not that he is an indifferent or credulous observer; he combines a certain matter-of-fact shrewdness with an almost feminine mobility of sentiment. His pictures are sharply drawn, and with features made expressive by their distinctAn ample proportion of flesh and blood is compounded with his most ethereal aspirations. He loves the aroma of wine and the fragrance of tobacco, as well as men of less spiritual tendencies. Such is an excellent temperament for a tourist, for it makes him genial and many-sided, preserving him from the fantastic and rhapsodical, on the one hand, and from prosy commonplace on the other. After a succession of animated portraitures of Oriental life, and of illustrations of scenes described in sacred history, Mr. Prime closes his volume, like that of "Boat-Life in Egypt," with a programme of practical directions for future travelers who may be tempted by his gorgeous sketches to visit themselves the scenes which he describes. The access to Jerusalem, we are informed, is not difficult to Americans or Europeans. A regular French steamer from Marseilles touches at Jaffa every fortnight, and from that place the journey to Jerusalem can be made in a single day. There are two good hotels in the Holy City, but generally, in Syria, the tent is the best dependence for shelter and comfort in every kind of weather. Pistols are necessary for the traveler in that country; warm clothing must be provided, especially in the spring, which is the safest season, and a horse and saddle should be procured before commencing the tour. In Beyrout there are good inns, plenty of dragomans, and every convenience for a Syrian journey. No person should attempt to travel in the interior without a tent. The mud huts of the natives afford but wretched accommodations, and, after the fatigue and exposure of traveling, are entirely insufficient to afford the necessary repose. Many Americans have in this way contracted Syrian fevers, and fallen victims to their rashness. amused by its contents, and no less by the grotesque self-complacency of the author. The Athelings is the title of a new novel by Mrs. OLIPHANT, remarkable for its just delineations of English character, its natural domestic scenes, and the flowing ease of its diction. (Harper and Brothers.) Heroines of Methodism, by Rev. GEORGE COLES. (Published by Carlton and Porter.) The devout and noble women whose names are commemorated in this volume have been held in signal honor among the followers of Wesley. Selected from various walks in life, with every diversity of natural temperament and intellectual culture, and in most cases presenting few points in common, except those connected with their religious experience, they all agree in the deep feeling of piety and devotion to the cause of the Gospel, for which they have been regarded as models in the annals of their Church. The biographies here given have been diligently compiled from trustworthy documents, and will be cordially welcomed by religious readers. Philosophy of Skepticism and Ultraism, by JAMES B. WALKER. (Published by Derby and Jackson.) In the form of familiar letters to a friend, Mr. Walker here submits the religious views of Theodore Parker and kindred thinkers to a stringent and caustic examination. The author is already widely and favorably known to American theologians as a writer on the philosophy of religion, and this production will probably increase his reputation for acute analysis and controversial skill. He has endeavored to give a popular refutation of opinions which he regards as among "the prevailing moral fallacies of the times," and to bring back to a "rational apprehension of religious doctrine and duty" some of the "no inconsiderable portion of the business men of our cities and villages who are influenced by opinions which are inconsistent both with sound reason and revelation." The work is written with earnestness and severity, and in an eminently lucid style. Verse Memorials, by MIRABEAU B. LAMAR. (Published by W. P. Fetridge and Co.) The exPresident of Texas has gathered up in this volume a variety of memorials suggestive of the softer feelings which often embellish a career of statesmanship and war. The principal themes of his poems are derived from the remembrance of friendship and love, and celebrate the charms of the better part of creation with the tender enthusiasm which the gallant soldier is bound to cherish in the presence of the fair. He Life of Mary, Queen of Scots, by DONALD The Romany Rye, by GEORGE BORROW. (Pub- M'LEOD. (Published by Charles Scribner.) The lished by Harper and Brothers.) The erratic au- materials for a trustworthy account of the Scottish thor of "Lavengro" here gives the sequel to his Queen have greatly multiplied within a recent strange adventures, as described in that audacious, date. Prince Alexander de Rostoff, especially, romantic, fanciful, and marvelous production. It has devoted himself to the research of valuable is made up of a tissue of astounding incidents, documentary evidence with eminent success. peripatetic experiences in the rural districts of En- has collected, in seven large octavo volumes, more gland, discussions of religion and horse-flesh, ti- than eight hundred important memoirs and parades against total abstinence and Catholicism, pers which had previously slumbered in the dust conversations in ale-houses and with superannu- of Italian, French, and Austrian family archives, ated hostlers, profound disquisitions on philology, in royal libraries, university records, and other savage assaults on the universal critical tribe, and sources, now for the first time opened to the light. a general overflowing of egotism, garrulity, and Mr. M'Leod has made use of these copious matethe liveliest vanity. A Bohemian by nature as rials in the preparation of his work. He engages well as by adoption, Borrow gives full scope to his in the defense of the royal lady, with whose chargipsy proclivities, and with a potent union of mal-acter he has strong sympathies, in a spirit of chivice, acuteness, and brilliancy of imagination, has alric devotion, rather than of historical impartialmade a book which no one can read without being ity. HEROISM.-The noblest and most exhilarating to lift it to that level which makes it a proper ob objects of human contemplation are those which exhibit human nature in its exalted aspects. Our hearts instinctively throb and burn in sympathy with grand thoughts and brave actions as radiated from great characters; for they give palpable form to ideals of conduct domesticated in all healthy imaginations, and fulfill prophecies uttered in the depths of all aspiring souls. They are, in fact, what all men feel they ought to be. They inspire our weakness by the energy of their strength; they sting our pride by the irony of their elevation. Their flights of thought and audacities of action, which so provokingly mock our wise saws and proper ways, and which seem to cast ominous conjecture on the sanity of their minds, can not blind us to the fact that it is we and not they who are unnatural; that nature, obstructed in common men, twisted into unnatural distortions, and only now and then stuttering into ideas, comes out in them freely, harmoniously, sublimely, all hinderances burned away by the hot human heart and flaming human soul which glow unconsumed within them. They are, indeed, so filled with the wine of life, so charged with the electricity of mind—they have, in Fletcher's fine extravagance, "so much man thrust into them" that manhood will force its way out, and demonstrate its innate grandeur and power. ject even of contempt. Fishes have had their Agassiz, birds their Audubon, insects their Huber, but science, it seems, has not yet descended to the sneaks-a contemptuous silence more unendurable, perhaps, than the sharpest invective; and it is truly an act of benevolence to relieve the sneak from the agony of this voiceless scorn, and place him on that inverted eminence of littleness where he may be viewed in all the petty perfection of his descendentalism. And in speaking of him we shall attempt to individualize the class, without meaning to hint that any individual reaches the ideal perfection of the type. The fundamental peculiarity of this antithesis and antagonist of the hero is his tendency to skulk and evade the requirements of every generous, kindling, and exalting sentiment which the human heart contains. He has, to be sure, a feeble glimmer of thought, a hesitating movement of conscience, a sickly perception that he exists as a soul, and his claim to be considered a man must therefore be reluctantly admitted; but his soul is so puny, so famine-wasted by fasting from the soul's appropriate diet, that he knows of its existence only as an invalid knows of the existence of his stomach and dwindle into petty tributaries of its snarling venom and spleen. It is compounded of envy, fear, folly, obstinacy, malice-all of them bad qualities, but so modified in him by the extreme limitation of his conceptions and the utter poltroonery of his character, that we may well hesitate to call them bad. He is, indeed, too small a creature to reach even the elevation of vice, and no general term designating a sin can be applied to him without doing injustice to the dignity of evil and the respectabilities of the Satanic. by its qualms. This soul, revealed in the last probe of the most penetrating microscopic analysis, This indestructible manhood, which thus makes and trembling dizzily on its finest edge, a mere for itself a clear and clean path through all imped-point between life and lifelessness, is still essentialiments, is commonly called Heroism, or genius in ly the soul of a sneak, and its chief office appears action-genius that creatively clothes its ascending to be to give malignity to his littleness, by weakly thoughts in tough thews and sinews, uplifts char- urging him to hate all who have more. This ranacter to the level of ideas, and impassionates soar- cor of his has an inexpressible felicity of meanness, ing imagination into settled purpose. The hero, which analysis toils after in vain. His patriotism, therefore, with his intelligence all condensed into his morality, his religion, his philanthropy, if he will-compelled to think in deeds, and find his lan- pretend to have any of these fine things, are all guage in events-his creative energy spending it-infected with it, lose their nature in its presence, self not in making epics, but in making historyand who thus brings his own fiery nature into immediate, invigorating contact with the nature of others, without the mediation of the mist of words -is, of course, the object both of heartier love and of fiercer hatred than those men of genius whose threatening thought is removed to the safe ideal distance of Art. The mean-minded, the little-hearted, and the pusillanimous of soul instinctively recognize him as their personal enemy; are scared and cowed by the swift sweep of his daring will, and wither inwardly as they feel the ominous glance of his accusing eyes; and they accordingly intrench themselves and their kind in economic maxims and small bits of detraction, in sneers, suspicions, cavils, scandals, in all the defenses by which malice and stupidity shut out from themselves, and strive to shut out from others, the light that streams from a great and emancipating nature. We must clear away all this brushwood and undergrowth before the hero can be seen in his full proportions; and this will compel us to sacrifice remorselessly to him the whole race of the sneaks-a class of creatures who have, as Godwin would say, "the audacity to call themselves men!" and who hunt all magnanimity of soul with a pertinacity of rancor worthy of such ambitious professors of meanness. To this division of animated nature we propose to give a short introductory analysis-a difficult task, because it has heretofore not been deemed worthy of scientific investigation, and requires a strong effort Mean as this poisonous bit of humanity is, he still wields a wide influence over opinion by creeping stealthily into the recesses of other and larger minds, and using their powers to give currency to his sentiments. He thus dictates no inconsiderable portion of the biography, criticism, history, politics, and belles-lettres in general circulation; and, by a cunning misuse of the words prudence and practical wisdom, impudently teaches that disinterestedness is selfishness in disguise, poetry a sham, heroism craft or insanity, religion a convenient lie, and human life a cultivated bog. We detect his venomous spirit in all those eminent men whose abilities are exercised to degrade man, and wither up the springs of generous action. Thus Dean Swift, in his description of the Yahoos, combines the sentiment of the sneak with the faculty, of the satirist; Rochefoucauld, in his "Maxims,' the sentiment of the sneak combined with the faculty of the philosopher; and Voltaire, in his "Pu celle," presents a more hideous combination still of sneak and poet. "Whatever crazy sorrow saith, No life that breathes with human breath Hath ever truly wished for death. "'Tis life of which our nerves are scant, Oh life-not death-for which we pant, More life, and fuller, that we want!" This life of the soul, which is both light and heat, intelligence and power-this swift-ascending instinct of the spirit to spiritual ideas and lawsthis bold committal of self to something it values more than all the interests of self-attests the presence of the heroic element by indicating an ideal in the scale of moral precedence, according as it fastens its upward glance on the idea of glory, or country, or humanity, or heaven. This will lead to a short consideration of the hero as a soldier, as a patriot, as a reformer, and as a saint. In viewing the hero as a soldier, it must be remembered that the first great difficulty in human life is to rouse men from the abject dominion of selfishness, laziness, sensuality, fear, and other forms of physical existence but spiritual death. Fear is the paralysis of the soul; and nature, preferring anarchy to imbecility, lets loose the aggressive passions to shake it off. Hence war, which is a rude protest of manhood against combining order with slavery, and repose with degradation. As long as it is a passion, it merely illustrates nature's favorite game of fighting one vice with another; but in noble natures the passion becomes consecrated by the heart and imagination, acknowledges an ideal aim, and, under the inspiration of the sentiment of honor, inflames the whole man with a love of the dazzling idea of glory. It is this heroic element in war which palliates its enormities, humanizes its horrors, and proves the combatants to be men, and not tigers and wolves. Its grand illusions-fopperies to the philosopher and vices to the moralist-are realities to the hero. Glory feeds his heart's hunger for immortality, gives him a beautiful disdain of fear, puts ecstasy into his courage, and claps wings to his aspirations, and makes the grim battle-field, with its crash of opposing hosts and the deafening din of its engines of death, as sweet to him Having thus ruled out the evidence of these caricatures and caricaturists of humanity against the reality of the heroic element in man, we may now proceed to its analysis and description. And first, it is necessary to state that all vital ideas and purposes have their beginning in sentiments. Sentiment is the living principle, the soul, of thought | and volition-determining the direction, giving the impetus, and constituting the force, of faculties. Heroism is no extempore work of transient impulse -a rocket rushing fretfully up to disturb the dark-standard of conduct. Let us now contemplate it ness by which, after a moment's insulting radiance, it is ruthlessly swallowed up-but a steady fire, which darts forth tongues of flame. It is no sparkling epigram of action, but a luminous epic of character. It first appears in the mind as a mysterious but potent sentiment, working below consciousness in the unsounded depths of individual being, and giving the nature it inhabits a slow, sure, upward tendency to the noble and exalted in meditation and action. Growing with the celestial nutriment on which it feeds, and gaining strength as it grows, it gradually condenses into conscious sentiment. This sentiment then takes the form of intelligence in productive ideas, and the form of organization in heroic character; so that, at the end, heart, intellect, and will are all kindled in one blaze, all united in one individuality, and all gush out in one purpose. The person thus becomes a living soul, thinking and acting with the rapidity of one who feels spiritual existence, with the audacity of one who obeys spiritual intuitions, and with the intelligence of one who discerns spiritual laws. There is no break or flaw in the connection between the various parts of his nature, but a vital unity, in which intellect seems to have the force of will, and will the insight and foresight of intellect. There is no hesitation, no stopping half-way, in the pursuit of his lofty aim, partly because his elevation being the elevation of nature, he is not perched on a dizzy peak of thought, but is established on a table-land of character, and partly because there plays round the object he seeks a light and radiance of such strange, unearthly lustre that his heart, smitten with love for its awful beauty, is drawn to it by an irresistible fascination. Disappointment, discouragement, obstacles, drudgery, but sting his energies by opposition, or are glorified to his imagination as steps; for beyond them and through them is the Celestial City of his hopes, shining clear to the inner eye of his mind, tempting, enticing, urging him on through all impediments, by the sweet, attractive force of its visionary charm! The eyes of such men, by the testimony of painters, always have the expression of looking into distant space. As a result of this unwearied spiritual energy and this ecstatic spiritual vision, is the courage of the hero. He has no fear of death, because the idea of death is lost in his intense consciousness of life-full, rich, exulting, joyous, lyrical life-which ever asserts the immortality of mind, because it feels itself immortal, and is scornfully indifferent to that drowsy twilight of intellect into which atheism sends its unsubstantial spectres, and in which the whole flock of fears, terrors, despairs, weaknesses, and doubts, scatter their enfeebling maxims of misanthropy, and insinuate their ghastly temptations to suicide. One ray from a sunlike soul drives them gibbering back to their parent darkness; for "As ditties highly penn'd, Sung by a fair queen in a summer bower, This splendid fanaticism, while it has infected such fine and pure spirits as Bayard and Sir Philip Sidney, and thus allied itself with exalted virtues, has not altogether denied its hallowing light to men stained with Satanic vices. In Hannibal, in Cæsar, in Wallenstein, in Napoleon, in all commanders of gigantic abilities as well as heroic sentiments, and whose designs stretch over an extended field of operations, the idea of glory dilates to the vastness of their desires, and is pursued with a ruthlessness of intellect which, unchecked by moral principle, is indifferent to all considerations of truth and humanity which block the way to success. The ravenous hunger for universal dominion which characterizes such colossal spirits, though criminal, is still essentially ideal, and takes hold of what is immortal in evil. Such men are the unhallowed poets and artists of action, fiercely impatient to shape the world into the form of their imperious conceptions-like the usurping god of the old Greek mythology, who devoured all existing natures, and swallowed all the pre-existing elements of things, and then produced the world anew, after the pattern of his own tyrannous ideas. | fidence, which cowed the spirits of his adversaries, But their crimes partake of the greatness of their characters, and can not be imitated by malefactors of a lower grade. and almost made them disbelieve the evidence of their senses. Thus he induced the Austrian embassador to commit the folly of signing the treaty of Campo Formio, by a furious threat of instant war, which, if declared at that time, would certain a precious vase of porcelain, a gift to the embassador from the Empress Catharine, he exclaimed passionately, "The die is then cast; the truce is broken; war declared. But mark my words! before the end of autumn I will break in pieces your monarchy as I now destroy this porcelain ;" and, dashing it into fragments, he bowed and retired. The treaty was signed the next day. The courage of the devotee of glory has in it an element of rapture which resembles the fine frenzy of the poet. The hero, indeed, has such prodig-ly have resulted to Austria's advantage. Seizing ious energy and fullness of soul, possesses so quick, keen, and burning a sense of life, that when great perils call for almost superhuman efforts, he exhibits flashes of valor which transcend all bodily limitations; for he feels, in the fury and delirium of imaginative ecstasy, as if his body were all ensouled, and, though riddled with bullets, would not consent to death. It was this sense which made Cæsar rush singly on the Spanish ranks, and carried Napoleon across the Bridge of Lodi. "I saw him," says Demosthenes, in speaking of Philip of Macedon, "though covered with wounds, his eye struck out, his collar-bone broke, maimed, both in his hands and feet, still resolutely rush into the midst of dangers, and ready to deliver up to fortune any part of his body she might desire, provided he might live honorably and gloriously with the rest." It was this sense also that forced out of the cold heart of Robespierre the only heroic utterance of his life. In his last struggle in the Convention, surrounded by enemies eager for his blood, and his endeavors to speak in his defense drowned by the clamors of the assembly, desperation infused eloquence even into him, and he cried out, in a voice heard above every thing else, "President of Assassins! hear me !" The hero, also, when his inspiration is a thought, has a kind of faith that the blind messengers of death hurtling round him, will respect him who represents in his person the majesty of an idea. "The ball that is to hit me," said Napoleon, "has not yet been cast;" and this confidence of great generals in a tacit understanding between them and the bullets was quaintly expressed by the brave Dessaix in the presentiment of death which came over him on the morning of the battle of Marengo. "It is a long time," he said to one of his aids-decamp, "since I have fought in Europe. The bullets won't know me again. Something will happen." The audacity and energy of the hero likewise stimulate his intelligence, brightening and condensing rather than confusing his mind. The alertness, sagacity, and coolness of his thinking are never more apparent than in the frenzy of conflict. At the terrible naval battle of the Baltic, Nelson, after the engagement had lasted four hours, found that an armistice was necessary to save his fleet from destruction, and in the heat and din of the cannonade, wrote to the Crown Prince of Denmark proposing one. Not a minute was to be lost, and an officer hastily handed him a wafer to seal it. But Nelson called for a candle, and deliberately sealed it in wax. "This is no time," he said, "to appear hurried and informal." Gonsalvo, the great captain, in one of his Italian battles, had his powder magazine blown up by the enemy's first discharge. His soldiers, smitten by sudden panic, paused and turned, but he instantly rallied them with the exclamation, "My brave boys, the victory is ours! Heaven tells us by this signal that we shall have no further need of our artillery." Napoleon was famous for combining daring with shrewdness, and was politic even in his fits of rage. In desperate circumstances he put on an air of reckless con But, perhaps, the grandest example in modern history of that audacity which combines all the physical, civic and mental elements of courage, is found in Napoleon's return from Elba, and triumphant progress to Paris. The world then beheld the whole organization of a monarchy melt away like a piece of frost-work in the sun, before a person and a name. Every incident in that march is an epical stroke. He throws himself unhesitatingly on the Napoleon in every man and mass of men he meets, and Napoleonism instinctively recognizes and obeys its master. On approaching the regiment at Grenoble, the officers in command gave the order to fire. Advancing, confidently, within ten steps of the leveled muskets, and baring his breast, he uttered the well-known words, “Soldiers of the Fifth Regiment, if there is one among you who would kill his Emperor, let him do it! here I am!" The whole march was worthy such a commencement, profound as intelligence, irresistible as destiny. But the test of ascension in heroism is not found in faculty, but in the sentiment which directs the faculty; the love of glory, therefore, must yield the palm in disinterestedness of sentiment to the love of country, and the hero as a patriot, take precedence of the hero as a soldier. The great conservative instinct of patriotism is in all vigorous communities, and under its impulse whole nations sometimes become heroic. Even its prejudices are elements of spiritual strength, and most of the philosophic chatterers who pretend to be above them, are, in reality, below them. Thus the old Hollander, who piously attempted to prove that Dutch was the language spoken by Adam in Paradise, or the poor Ethiopian, who be lieves that God made His sands and deserts in person, and contemptuously left the rest of the world to be manufactured by His angels, each is in a more hopeful condition of manhood than the cosmopolitan coxcomb, who, from the elevation of a mustache and the comprehensiveness of an imperial, lisps elegant disdain of all narrow national peculiarities. The great drawback on half the liberality of the world, is its too frequent connection with indifference or feebleness. When we apply to men the tests of character, we often find that the amiable gentleman, who is so blandly superior to the prejudices of sect and country, and who clasps the whole world in the mild embrace of his commonplaces, becomes a furious bigot when the subjectmatter rises to the importance of one-and-sixpence, and the practical question is whether he or you shall pay it. The revenge of the little in soul and the weak in will is to apply to the strong in character the tests of criticism; and then your uzmistakable do-nothing can prattle prettily in the pa |