be sure that the material gathered here will be worked up in some way. He found that we were not savages nor boors. He found that there were a hundred here for every score in England, who knew well, and loved, the men of whom he spoke. He found that the same red blood colors all the lips that speak the language he so nobly praised. He found friends instead of critics. He found those who, loving the author, love the man more. He found a quiet welcome from those who are waiting to welcome him again, and as sincerely.

DE
E TOCQUEVILLE, who has written the

most appreciative book on the United States that has been published, yet falls into many errors, among which we are disposed to class what he says of our want of permanent national records. His words are these: "The public administration (of the United States) is oral and traditionary. But little is committed to writing, and that little is wafted away like the leaves of the Sibyl, by the smallest breeze. The only historical remains are the newspapers; but, if a number be wanting, the chain of time is broken, and the Present is severed from the Past. I am convinced, that in fifty years it will be more difficult to collect authentic documents concerning the social condition of the Americans, at the present day, than it is to find the remains of the administration of France during the middle ages; and, if the United States were ever invaded by barbarians, it would be necessary to have recourse to the history of other nations, in order to learn any thing of the people who now inhabit them."

It is a curious comment on this speculation of the distinguished Frenchman, that we have, perhaps, more materials for the minute and faithful history of our political and social life, and for illustrating the characters of our great men, than any other nation; and that the habit of preserving memorials, even insignificant ones, of public occurrences, as well as every trace of men who have made any conspicuous figure, is rather a vice than a deficiency of our literature. The voluminous correspondence of the revolutionary worthies, from Washington and Franklin down to the obscurer personages of their time; the private memoirs, that the families, or friends, of the Adamses, Morris, Livingston, Jay, Story, Randolph,

Jefferson, and Hamilton, have so carefully compiled: the labored collections of the Historical Societies of the several States, extending to tracts, pamphlets, maps, state papers and books; the records of local celebrations and festivities preserved in the archives of towns and cities; and, finally, the newspapers, of which, in their multiplicity, there is no fear, as De Tocqueville somewhat ludicrously intimates, that the issue of a single day will be lost, to break the chain of events-are so many hostages taken of Time to secure us against his fatal inroads.

We are reminded also of another refutation of the remark we have quoted, by a series of the "Works" of some of our eminent later statesmen, put forth by themselves or their admirers, to give extension and permanence to whatever they may have said or done worthy of more than transient notice. There is now lying before us a score of volumes, issued within the last few months, which contain the speeches and writings of Levi Woodbury, William H. Seward, Henry Clay, John C. Calhoun, and Daniel Webster, together with attempts, more or less elaborate, in the form of biographies and notes, to convey" to other nations and to future times" some knowledge of their deeds and characters. Mr. Woodbury's "Works" are in three volumes, consisting mainly of his speeches as Senator, his reports as Secretary of the Treasury, and his occasional addresses; Mr. Seward appears in three large tomes, similarly filled; Mr. Clay in two, chiefly of speeches; Mr. Calhoun in one, containing his dissertation on the Constitution, to be followed by two other volumes of reports and speeches; and Mr. Webster in six, embracing his orations, diplomatic papers, forensic arguments, and debates. There is, therefore,

great similarity in the subject-matter of these publications; but that fact rather heightens than impairs their ntility, at least in a historical sense, because it furInishes us with the views of several different minds, in respect to the same great questions and events.

Embracing as they do, moreover, discussions of nearly all the more important issues that have arisen since the origin of our democratic government and under the peculiar structure of our mixed societies-questions of agriculture, industry, education and religion, as well as of State and Federal politics,-by men who moved in the midst of the agitations they caused, applying the best energies of mind and heart to the peaceful solution of each as it arose, they not only secure us, so far as they go, from the reproach of De Tocqueville, but are valuable contributions to letters, as well as to history.

For, it should be remembered, that the literature of a nation is not confined to magazines, books, journals and poems, or to those forms in which the intellectual life of a people is ordinarily expressed. All sincere and vigorous utterances of national feeling and thought, become, when recorded, a part of that literature. Political debates, especially in a nation where the powers and attainments of men are almost universally devoted to active pursuits, as they are with us, are likely to be a most original and vital part of it, and springing warm from the brains of foremost men, under the impulse of great exigencies, when their abilities are taxed to the highest extent, to overcome opposition, and to bring about worthy and noble ends, they will possess an earnestness, freedom, and depth of purpose, which we do not always find in the colder essays of the professed man of letters. At least they will be truer to the form and pressure of the time, though, perhaps, less marked by scholastic perfections.

The editors of these books then have, in our opinion, rightly called them "Works;" for the men from whom they came were not only legislators, orators, magistrates, but authors as well. They did not, it is true, aim at literary reputation, yet their efforts have the characteristics of literary performances; they are an expression of our national peculiarities; they abound in pleasant narratives of facts, skilful dialectics, comprehensive and close argument, impassioned eloquence, and sarcastic retort; and have a value beyond the occasion or interest in which they originated.

Nor should we omit to mention the special interest which is communicated to these volumes by the fact, that the au

thors of them were rivals and competitors in the great Olympian contests of our Senate. Accustomed to encounter each other in those athletic grapplings of mind with mind, which have illustrated the history of parties for the last half cen tury, their books may be said, now that they have departed from the scene, to renew their struggles. Recalling the magaificent picture of the great German painter, Kaulbach, descriptive of the battle of the Huns, the spirits of the combatants, thus, when their bodies are laid in their dust, arise once more and resume the battle in the air. But we have this advantage in the books, that the ferocity and bitterness of the original strife are laid aside, and only the real life, the essential spirit of the conflict remains.

Mr. Woodbury, the first on our list, was not a man who widely influenced his day and generation, and we may dismiss him in a few words. As a Senator of the United States, in which capacity he served for some years; as Secretary of the Treasury during the administration of Mr. Van Buren, and latterly as a District Judge, he attained to a respectable position; he served his party with diligence, and was evidently a man of solid judgment and sincere faith in his opinions; but he was scarcely a leader out of the small State of New Hampshire, in which he lived, and he never rose to such eminence as to become the representative of any distinctive or vital policy. He wrote with vigor, but yet without much grace or facility: his sentences are cumbrous; what he saw clearly even, he did not always state clearly; and when he seeks to illustrate a position, he rather overloads it with commonplace ornament, than simplifies it by apt and lucid figures. A politician and a jurist, the habit of his mind was that of reserve and caution, so that the propositions he utters come to us with so many qualifying phrases,— with so many ifs, buts and provideds, that they are shorn of their strength, and are often more of a puzzle than an impulse to the intellect. At the same time Justice Woodbury had strong popular sympathies, cherished an enlightened and liberal political philosophy, was an enthusiast, almost, in his hopes of human progress, and only needed to surrender himself more entirely to the inspirations of this side of his nature, to have been an eloquent writer and a great man.

Mr. Seward, we think, a higher order of mind, not because he is more comprehensive or profound, but because he has a finer fibre of brain, and rises more easily into the region of general principles. He is a yet living statesman.

surrounded by preposessions and hostilities, and we are therefore aware that our estimate of him may be influenced by current prejudices; but we have read his writings attentively, and are prepared to give an honest judgment as to his merits.

Most men, engaged in the actual contests of politics, are liable to be overrated by their friends, and underrated by their enemies; but the peculiarity of Mr. Seward's case has been that he has reversed the process, and, if not underrated by his friends, is at least overrated by his enemies. In other words, the nature and kind of opposition that he has encountered, have given him a prestige beyond the influence he is entitled to by his real abilities. The masses of the people hearing him decried so vehemently as a most dangerous fellow, the contriver of every nefarious plot, and the secret agent of every disorganizing movement, are apt to take his opponents at their word, and to believe that one who is so fertile in expedients and so hard to baffle, must be a prodigious worker, destined sooner or later to the most commanding sway. Men admire success, and even the reputation of it, and have a secret liking for those who are roundly abused; a fact which was evidenced in another case lately, that of Martin Van Buren, who was indebted as much to the magical influence his foes ascribed to him, as to the attachment of his friends or his native sagacity, for any elevation that he attained. Give a man a name for miraculous shrewdness and management, and you give him a host of friends; in fact, open his way, without efforts of his own, to almost any advancement.

The characteristics of Mr. Seward's mind are clearness, activity and cunning, to use the term in its best sense. He grasps his subjects sharply, with penetration as well as power, manages them with subtle and quick dexterity, and being of a sanguine temperament, never wearies of the labor of elucidation and display. His logic is not of the close and compact sort which may be compared to mailed armor, impregnable to all assaults, for it is rather demonstrative than convincing, and consists more in the adroit linking together of facts, than the rigid deduction of principles. But he has great facility of expression, both as a writer and speaker; is always perspicuous, generally pleasing, and sometimes eloquent; he has read considerably, and understandingly; and his style, without being idiomatic or classical, is not offensively incorrect. He avoids, for the most part, excessive ornament, that turgid floridity so common to our orators; yet there is a

tendency to diffuseness, and a swelling, and consequently, languid wordiness in his hastier efforts which greatly debilitate their strength. He expatiates too much. is too long in covering his ground, and is apt to be tedious when he ought to be concise. Had he compressed what he has published into one-third the space, he might have said every thing that he has now said, and much better. Nor is it any excuse for this carelessness of composition, to say that his addresses and letters were prepared in the midst of active occupations, on the spur of the moment, and without time for that limae labor which gives the last finish to language. This might have been an excuse for them, as originally uttered, but not for them as deliberately collected and edited. Besides, it is not impossible to acquire a compact, precise and simple style, even in extemporaneous effusions-to make compression the habit of the mind-and when we consider what a lasting charm it lends to speech, the neglect of it, especially by men who desire to be read widely, and in after times, seems a strange oversight.

There is another defect of his compositions, arising partly in the same causes which produce diffuseness, and partly in a limited range of cultivation, which is, the use of worn and current metaphors, or commonplace turns of expression. Not remarkably original in his views, he is less so in his language. We miss that nice choice of words, those racy, idiomatic phrases, those graceful or happy allusions, those pregnant epithets, which condense a whole argument into a word, and those novel and picturesque suggestions, relieving the weight of argument, which proclaim a thorough master of his art. Yet Mr. Seward goes far towards supplying the place of these finer strokes of genius by his amiable and conciliating manner, a temper singularly free from gall, his vivacious readiness, and his elastic, almost exuberant, vitality, answering the purpose of a genuine enthusiasm. If he does not produce deep and vivid impressions, he carries his readers with him by the lucidity of his statement, the intrepid and manly spirit in which he meets difficulties and announces principles, and his obvious command of his position. Never impassioned, even in his most declamatory passages, he is yet always animated and fresh, full of hope, and thoroughly American.

It is no part of our duty, as reviewers. to question the sincerity of Mr. Seward's convictions, as the politicians are prone to do; the less so, as we find his opinions cohering in a very intelligent and consistent system of political doctrine. Nor do

his volumes furnish us any occasion for doubting the perfectly unaffected nature of his popular tendencies, because he every where expresses his opinions frankly, even in the face of a known hostile sentiment. At the same time, we must say that we often rise from reading him with a stronger impression of his adroitness than of his soundness. We do not detect him in any of the meaner arts of the demagogue, cannot lay our hands upon any single act of political trimming, but, on the contrary, note an unusual persistence, or unity of purpose, and a manly assertion often of generous though unaccepted doctrines; and yet we fear the while that his virtue is not of that incorrigible and losing sort, which would prefer, with old Andrew Marvell, "to scrape a blade bone of cold mutton" in a garret, to faring sumptuously in the palace of the king.

Our utter disagreement with the school of statesmen to which Mr. Seward belongs, may doubtless account for this uneasy feeling, as one is ever inclined to distrust the men whose principles he rejects. The school we allude to is that which tends to aggrandize government at the expense of the spontaneous action of the people, and make the state a sort of omnipotent and omnipresent, and consequently omnivorous power in society-a Jack-of-all-trades, a beneficent Providence; a Lady Bountiful of the parish, a supreme moralist, a universal pedagogue, and a high Justice Rotulorum as well as a low catchpole. In other words, it comprises within the sphere of government, every function almost of society and of individuals, causing it to build railroads and canals, regulate commerce, encourage trade, equip steamships, promote agriculture, educate children, and, we suppose, support the poor,—and all in addition to its ordinary and more legitimate duties of protecting, on terms of perfect equality and right, the persons and property of its citizens! Now, is it not obvious at a glance, that this theory of the objects of legislation, whatever advantages it may have in other respects, opens the way to enormous abuses, inviting the assaults of schemers and profligates, and inflaming while it debases the contests of parties? Wherever it is adopted, a state must come to be looked upon, not as the arbiter of an absolute justice between man and man, but as the dispenser of corrupt and mercenary favors; and those statesmen, who make themselves conspicuous in bending legislation from its lofty, important and true ends, to the advancement of local and individual privileges, must inevitably excite against themselves the suspicion of a sinister and

unworthy motive. Of course that suspicion is often misplaced, but the general prevalence of it cannot be denied. Only a man of Washington's continence, or of Hampden's integrity, could escape the taint of the imputation; and Mr. Seward therefore, who has long been active in pushing projects of one-sided benefit, should not complain if the public, in spite of his nobler and liberal performances, in the cause of universal human freedom, should confound his motives with those of his sordid clients. The whole system of special legislation and patronage, in our view, is deplorably wrong, and those who dabble in it can hardly avoid defilement.

to

We think this idea of the sphere of government is deplorably wrong, and yet we are not prepared to state with any precision where the limit of its action properly begins or ends. How much should be left to the individual, and how much the state may legitimately do, is the great unadjusted question of political science. If we adopt the extreme democratic theory, which confines the state to the simple protection of person and property, or those objects which are common every member of society, we deprive ourselves of an important means of advancing individual and social welfare, which could not be so well advanced in any other way; whilst, on the other hand, if we assume the unlimited authority of government to interpose in every subject of public concern, we cannot stop short either of gross despotism or gross corruption. The liberty of the citizen to achieve his own fortune in his own way, provided he does not infringe on the same right in others, ought to be sacred under all circumstances; yet, who will deny that there are objects of vast general utility, "enterprises of pith and moment," which cannot or will not be accomplished, if abandoned to the voluntary efforts of individuals. Take a case in point, of immense interest just now,-the railroad to the Pacific! Ought it to be undertaken by the government, or by individuals? If you say by individuals, the reply is that it would require an outlay of labor and capital to which no private company could be competent, even were such a prodigious company itself not a dangerous thing to create. Again, if you say by the government, you must see that it would inevitably lead to a most pernicious concentration of patronage, to a wholesan jobbing in the Legislature, and to acts of aggravated injustice in respect to different localities. Who will draw the line, therefore, between what the state ought to do, and what it ought not? Who will tell us how far the indi

vidual ought to surrender to society, or where its interference is an encroachment, or where a right? Every body admits that society ought to punish crime, for without such discipline, the continued existence of society would be impossible-but ought it not then for a stronger reason, to institute means for the prevention of crime,-to guarantee the poor against anxiety and dependence, the most prolific causes of crime; to educate the ignorant; to remove the means of temptation, and to encourage virtue in every way? You answer yes! Then why not establish a religion which experience has proved is a most efficient agent of social regeneration? But by establishing a religion you are a long way on towards despotism. Or to reverse the process of the argument, we may say, that if you leave religion to the voluntary action of the people, why not the whole subject of education; why not the support of the insane and poor; why not the organization of the police; why not the line of coast defences; in short, why have any government at all, why not surrender the care of every interest of society to voluntary action? But this would be anarchy, and thus on either hypothesis we fluctuate from one extreme to the other, until our faith in the existence of any stable political science is quite lost.

In reality there is no fixed political science, no absolute and unchangeable principles, that have yet been discovered: men and parties attach themselves to one side or the other, according to their constitutional tendencies, their education, or their interests; and the violent contests which rage among them are more about traditions and expedients than great questions of right. Yet in the absence of a real and complete science, we think that both reason and experience are bringing us in the direction in which it lies. Every American now doubts that the world is governed too much; every day proves that the people are to be trusted with larger measures of power, and a broader latitude of liberty, as they grow in intelligence and virtue; while the entire tendency of the age is towards the enfranchisement of society from old restrictive laws and fetters. The arrogant assumptions of the Church have long since been toppled down; the pretensions of nobility and rank are crumbling away; and our faith as well as aspiration is, that every other barrier, in the way of complete individual freedom, will soon perish for ever.

But this is a digression; and we return to Mr. Seward, to say that the publication of his book will materially advance his reputation; it will correct many false ideas that have gone abroad, and increase the

general respect for his abilities as well as his character.

Henry Clay, whose works are the next on our list, was by general consent, the most finished and splendid orator of a nation, prolific of orators. Versatile, adroit, bold, profound, pathetic and imperious-a man of the noblest instincts, an able tactician, a far-sighted statesman, a born leader of men,-his eloquence was of that masterly order, which "wielded at will the fierce democratie" and commanded the selecter applause of listening senates. But great as was its influence on his contemporaries, and intense and fervent the admiration which it excited, it will be perpetuated, we suspect, rather as a remembrance and a tradition, than as a still living power. The volumes in which it is recorded convey some idea of its combined fervor, grace, and force, but a most inadequate one. It is true, they are not like those skeletons of Whitfield's sermons, which cause us to wonder how the man could have left such a reputationmere simulacra of the departed reality; for they contain his arguments, his facts, his illustrations, his appeals; in short. some indications of the large make and movement of the man; but the charm and the spirit are gone. The flashing eye, the rich melodious voice, the commanding form, "the snowy front, curled with golden hair," which gave them their original life, are gone; and as we read them, we feel like those who walk through the cavern of some mighty magician-the tools and instruments of his spells are about us, his gems, his treasures, his magic rings, his weird circles and diagrams; in fine, all the evidences of his art-but the fire has gone out in his furnace, and he himself hath vanished into thin air.

Both roof and floor, and walls, are all of gold,
But overgrown with dust and old decay.

This is the disadvantage of the orator, compared with the writer, that the best part of his performances escapes with the occasion; and if he be an active politician. he has no time to compensate, by the labors of the study, for the haste and immaturity of his extemporaneous efforts. His words are given loosely to the wind, and the wind carries them, on its swift wings, to the distant interlunar caves, to be returned to him no more for ever. But the writer, ripened by nutritious culture, and purified from taint by the refining processes of his art, commits his treasures to the imperishable amber of books. Thus, being dead, he yet speaks, and, in addition to the effects he wrought while living and the honors he enjoyed, both diffusion and